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. D49 
2010 
Copy 1 


Connecting to Collections 

A Report to the Nation 


. .INSTITUTE of , .. 

MuseunriandLibrary 

SERVICES 


Connecting 

si Collections 


A Call to Action 











Institute of Museum and Library Services 

1800 M Street NW, 9th Floor 
Washington, DC 20036 
202-653-IMLS (4657) 
www.imls.gov 


IMLS will provide visually impaired or learning-disabled individuals 
with an audio recording of this publication upon request. 

Printed September 2010 in the United States of America 


Written by John DiConsiglio 
Graphic Design by Beth Singer Design, LLC 
Publication Production by Ellen Arnold 
Photographic Research by Katherine Bowen 


Front cover photos, left to right: “Spirit," a 1902 Dentzel carousel 
horse from the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont; Register 
books, ca. 1900, from the District of Columbia Government Office 
of Public Records in Washington, D.C.; Image from the “Varsha 
Ritu” or “Rainy Season" mural in an Indian village in the state 
of Orissa; Australian landscapes from the University of California 
Botanical Garden. 

Back cover photos, left to right: 17th-century Korean gilt wood 
bodhisattva from the Samuel P. Harn Museum in Gainesville, Florida; 
Australian landscapes from the University of California Botanical 
Garden; Last Will and Testament of Blanche I. Bruce, from the Dis¬ 
trict of Columbia Government Office of Public Records in Washing¬ 
ton, D.C.; Acoma jar from the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture 
Laboratory of Anthropology, Department of Cultural Affairs in Santa 
Fe, New Mexico. 







Contents 


1 Connecting To Collections: Our Cultural 

Heritage At Risk 

8 Making Connections: The National 

Conservation Summit and Forums 


ray Or 


2*4NSFE?L 



18 Carrying the Message Overseas: 

The Salzburg Global Seminar 

26 The Bookshelf: Arming Institutions 
with the Resources They Need 

32 State-to-State: Statewide Partnership 
Grants Make a Mark Across the Map 

37 The Impact and the Future: IMLS Preserves 
the Treasures of the Past and Supports the 
Institutions that Protect them 


These original consecrated pages with 
excerpts from the Lotus Sutra were found 
inside the hollow body cavity of a 17th- 
century gilt wood bodhisattva. They have 
been removed for conservation (Samuel P. 
Ham Museum in Gainesville, Florida). 






Special Thanks 

Institute of Museum and Library Services 
staff in every department across the 
agency played a role in the Connecting to 
Collections initiative, which was led by: 


Nancy Rogers 

Senior Project Coordinator 


Abigail Swetz 

Program Specialist 


Marsha L. Semmel 

Acting Director, Deputy Director for 
Museums, and Director for Strategic 
Partnerships 


Mary L. Chute 

Deputy Director for Libraries 


Mamie Bittner 

Deputy Director for Policy, Planning, 
Research, and Communications 


See page 41 for a complete list of initia 
five partners and contributors. 


An American flag made in 1865, showing 
new repairs, is rolled for storage by 
staff member Mary Williamson 
(American Textile History Museum, 
Lowell, Massachusetts). 



























Connecting To Collections: 

Our Cultural Heritage At Risk 


The Tucson Museum of Art (TMA) has a virtual treasure 
trove of cultural landmarks within its collection. Among 
the museum's trusts is an original Andy Warhol piece 
and a seven-foot-high statue of the Virgin Mary that 
dates back to the late 17th century. 


"These are remarkable objects," says Susan Dolan, 
TMA's collections manager. "The public should 
see them." 


But there's a good chance that these artistic mas¬ 
terpieces will never be put on display. Why? Their 
condition is so bad—and they are in such dire need of 
preservation—that they can barely be moved, much 
less exhibited. The Warhol has sustained severe water 
damage. And the wood and silver statue of Mary is so 
fragile that Dolan worries it might crumble to pieces. 


Glance at libraries, museums, and archives around the 
country and a sad truth will become instantly clear: 
The Tucson Museum's woes are hardly unique. 


In Washington, D.C., the Stuart-Hobson Middle School 
is home to irreplaceable parent-teacher association 
scrapbooks and historical school photos that date back 
to 1926. The documents shed light on everything from 
the ethnic origins of families to local outbreaks of scarlet 
fever. They tell the story of the nation's struggle with in¬ 
tegration when the originally white-only school admitted 
African-American students after the 1954 Browri v. Board of 
Education decision. But these documents have sat in a little- 
used storeroom, weathering the ravages of humidity, bugs, 
and decay. 


In Honolulu, Hawaii, the Bishop Museum is home to three 
magnificent traditional cloaks, one of which is 300 years old. The 


Conservator Bob Barclay 
places this sacred feath¬ 
ered cloak, once worn by 
male members of the 
Hawaiian royal class, 
on its mount (Bishop 
Museum, Honolulu, 
Hawaii). 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 




A Public Trust at Risk 

A Public Trust at Risk: The Heritage Health 
Index (HHI) Report on the State of America's 
Collections, a project cosponsored by I MLS and 
Heritage Preservation, revealed that our nation’s 
collections of objects, documents, and digital 
materials, though essential to America’s cultural 
health, are imperiled by improper care and in need 
of protective action. The study’s findings are sober¬ 
ing. The HHI found that — 

■ 190 million objects held by archives, historical 
societies, libraries, museums, and scientific organi¬ 
zations in the United States are in need of conserva¬ 
tion treatment. 

■ 65 percent of collecting institutions have experienced 
damage to collections due to improper storage. 

■ 80 percent of collecting institutions do not have an 
emergency plan that includes collections, with staff 
trained to carry it out. 

■ 40 percent of institutions have no funds allocated in 
their annual budgets for preservation or conservation 










Chapter 1: Connecting to Collections 



eight-foot-wide garments 
are made of bundles of 
tiny red and yellow feath¬ 
ers from now-extinct birds. 
But the cloaks themselves 
face an uncertain future. 
Without much-needed pres¬ 
ervation, they risk wither¬ 
ing into a pile of feathers. 



r 13.5 million 
historic objects— 
from flags and quilts to 
presidential china and 
Pueblo pottery 


189 million 
natural science 
specimens 


4.7 million 

works of art 


These stories are every¬ 
where—from the most 
famous museums to the 
smallest county libraries. At the American 
Museum of Natural History in New York City, 
humidity and temperature have damaged 
the skins of the mighty elephant exhibits. At 
the University of South Dakota's I.D. Weeks 
Library, nearly 300,000 photos of Jazz Age 
greats like Chet Baker have slowly deteriorated 
due to chemical exposure. A flash flood sent a 
seven-foot wall of mud and water through the 
Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii. 

It destroyed more than 100,000 maps of early 
island explorations. And, at the Denver Public 
Library, 100 volumes of documents that chart 
the legacy, history, and lineage of families in 
frontier outposts are threatening to crumble 
after years of exposure to light and dust. 

More than 4.8 billion artifacts are held in 
public trust by more than 30,000 archives, 
historical societies, libraries, museums, scien¬ 
tific research collections, and archaeological 
repositories in the United States. They are visited 
more than 2.5 billion times a year. These artifacts 
embody the richness and diversity of our heri¬ 
tage. They include rare books and manuscripts, 
photographs, documents, sound recordings, 
moving images, digital materials, art, historic and 
ethnographic objects, archaeological artifacts, and 
natural science specimens. 


153 

million photographs 

270 million rare 
and unique books, 
periodicals, and 
scrapbooks 


But these treasures face such 
overwhelming hazards that 
they are in danger of disap¬ 
pearing. In communities 
around the country, muse¬ 
ums and libraries face losing 
their collections to everyday 
threats like exposure to light, 
humidity, high or fluctuating tem¬ 
peratures, and pest infestation. A 
2005 study by the nonprofit orga¬ 
nization Heritage Preservation, sup¬ 
ported by the Institute of Museum 
and Library Services (IMLS), found 
that nearly 190 million objects in U.S. col¬ 
lections are in urgent need of treatment or attention. 

"Each year, millions of Americans experience the 
cherished collections of maps, quilts, recordings, paint¬ 
ings, and countless other treasures held in our librar¬ 
ies, museums, archives, historic houses, and gardens. 
These priceless pieces of our past serve to enlighten, 
inform, and inspire all of us—from the schoolchild to 
the scholar. They help to give our communities a sense 
of place and identity," says Dr. Anne-Imelda M. Radice, 
former director of the IMLS. "But just as these chapters 
bear testimony to our rich past, so too are they being 
erased from our memory." 

Priceless pages from our national diary—from art ob¬ 
jects to historical artifacts, from scrapbooks compiled 
over generations to modern digital collections—are 
imperiled by hazards such as time, flood, and fire. And, 
although the stories these treasures tell are timeless, the 
collections themselves are not. 

"Sadly, once we lose these collections, we cannot get 
them back—a possibility with profound impact for fu¬ 
ture generations of learners," Radice says. 

For many in the conservation community, the HHI 
figures served as a wake-up call—a clear representation 




American Heritage Preservation Grant Spotlights 


Partnering with the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, IMLS 
launched the American Heritage Preservation Grants, a series of 
awards to small museums, libraries, and archives to treat, rehouse, 
and improve the storage environments of important collections. 

Through this public-private partnership, 107 cultural heritage insti¬ 
tutions have received grants of up to $3,000 to preserve treasures, 
including works of art, artifacts, and historical documents that con¬ 
vey the essential character and experience of the United States. 



I 

m 

1 

no 


OF COURSE! CAN! 



Iin patriotic as can be— 

And ration points T *wnt wcny me 




Center for Wooden Boats — 
Seattle, WA 

Year: 2009 
Amount: $3,000 


Union County Historical 
Society — Clayton, NM 

Year: 2009 
Amount: $2,991 




BOND 


War Loan 


These WWII-era posters are important to the collective memory of their community and the nation (Delaware County Community College, 
Media, Pennsylvania). 



Eric Dow, a professional wooden boatbuilder from Maine, 
leads a group of volunteers and students in the installa¬ 
tion of a new sheer damp for Shrimpo (Center for Wooden 
Boats, Seattle, Washington). 


Delaware County Community 
College — Media, PA 

Year: 2009 
Amount: $3,000 

The library at Delaware County 
Community College is using the 
funds to conserve 19 original 
World War II posters that were 
collected by a member of the 


community in the 1940s. 

The posters were produced by 
various government and civilian 
agencies and were used to en¬ 
courage the enlistment of men 
and women into military service, 
the purchase of war bonds, 
donation of blood, planting of 
Victory Gardens, and a general 


feeling of patriotism to win the 
war. The preservation measures 
will allow the posters to be 
made available for exhibit at the 
college, loaned to community 
organizations, and used by his¬ 
tory faculty at the college and 
requesting schools. 


The Center for Wooden Boats 
is having a custom canvas 
cover designed and installed 
on Shrimpo, a sailboat built in 
1914 by America’s Cup cham¬ 
pion sloop designer Nathaniel 
Herreshoff. The cover will 
protect the boat from rain while 
in storage, thus preventing dete¬ 
rioration of the wooden hull. The 
design process will be shared 
with visitors and interpretive 
signage will dis 
the importance 
of preven¬ 
tive care. 


The Herzstein Memorial Museum, 
part of the Union County His¬ 
torical Society in Clayton, New 
Mexico, is addressing the storage 
of 1,600 photographs and 1,500 
negatives that represent more 
than 100 years of community 
history. Funds are helping the mu¬ 
seum buy folders, boxes, shelving, 
and environmental monitoring 
equipment that will allow it to 
improve the care for its collection 
while also making it 
more accessible 
to the com¬ 
munity. 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 3 



















“Saving collections 
is a theme that brings 
libraries and museums 
together. There is nothing that 
doesn’t need ... conservation, 
preservation, public awareness, 
public respect for collections.’ 

— Former IMLS director, 
Anne-lmelda M. 

Radice 


The hides of these elephants in the 
American Museum of Natural History 
were threatened due to polluted air, fluc¬ 
tuations in temperature and relative 
humidity, and other perils 
(New York, New York). 


of the problems plaguing the nation's cultural institutions. "The 
HHI was a watershed moment in this field," says Ellen Holtzman, 
program director for American art at the Henry Luce Foundation. 
"Everyone was aware of the conditions we face in this communi¬ 
ty. But we didn't know the numbers. We didn't realize the extent 
of the ongoing need. Having that data in front of us certainly 
opened some eyes." 

But compiling statistics was only the first part of a landmark con¬ 
servation effort. "We now had all this information we had learned 
about our needs in terms of materials, staffing, funding, environ¬ 
mental issues, emergency response," notes Debra Hess Norris, 
chair of the Art Conservation Department at the University of 
Delaware. "But how do you translate that into an initiative and 
really make a difference for large, small, and medium-sized 
institutions?" 

To confront this crisis, IMLS launched Connecting to Collections, a 
national initiative to raise public awareness of the importance 
of caring for our treasures and to underscore the fact that these 
collections are essential to the American story. Since 2007, IMLS 
has traveled to cities across the country to inspire and inform 
collections care professionals and sound the alarm for action to 
save our nation's collections. "Connecting to Collections is a fabulous 
outgrowth of the [HHI] study and a global model of what can be 
accomplished if we reach out to the entire community and we all 
work together," Norris says. 


A Call to Action 

In response to the study's findings, the HHI made four 
recommendations to help institutions avoid serious conser¬ 
vation problems and the possible loss of the nation’s most 
valued treasures: 

■ Institutions must give priority to providing safe conditions 
for the collections they hold in trust. 

■ Every collecting institution must develop an emergency plan 
to protect its collections. 

i Every institution must assign responsibility for caring for its 
collection to members of its staff. 

Individuals in both the public and private sectors must as¬ 
sume responsibility for providing support. 


' iaiass * Mina.il' 









and territories and five 
Implementation Grants have 
been awarded. 


Many of the artifacts that teach 
us about science, history, and art 
are at risk. But, thanks to the efforts 
of IMLS and other conservation organi¬ 
zations and professionals, there are success 
stories too. 


A conservator works to ensure that the mount for a sacred feathered cloak (shown on page 1) 
will help to preserve the piece (Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii). 

With its partners and colleagues, and with support from a vari¬ 
ety of sources, IMLS held a national summit to engage leaders 
and explore strategies for preserving endangered collections. 

IMLS launched a national tour with forums in Atlanta, Denver, 
San Diego, and Buffalo, addressing topics such as digitizing 
works and caring for living collections like plants and animals. 

It held an international summit in Salzburg, Austria, that 
brought together 60 cultural heritage leaders from 32 countries 
to address the world's most pressing conservation dilemmas. 

It created a Bookshelf—a collection of vital resources to 
help sustain the work of the preservation community—and 
distributed it free of charge to 3,000 small and medium¬ 
sized institutions. 

It instituted a series of Statewide Planning and 
Implementation Grants to foster partnerships 
and cooperation among organizations and con¬ 
servation professionals. Planning grants have 
been awarded to 57 states, commonwealths. 


Washington's Stuart-Hobson Middle School received an IMLS- 
funded grant to rescue its historical documents and develop a 
school archive. The grant enabled the school to hire two part-time 
archivists. Under their direction, students have gonen into the 
preservation act, sorting, cataloging, and preserving school artifacts. 

And in Honolulu, an LMLS grant helped the Bishop Museum 
repair its fragile feathered cloaks. Much of the painstaking 
restoration process—which involved fixing broken netting and 
reattaching loose feather bundles—was done with the help of 
two graduate-level conservation program interns from New 
York University. The summer internship program was fostered 
by IMLS initiatives. And although the interns spent exhausting 
hours sewing and mending the cloaks—sometimes restoring as 
little as an inch a day—they called it a once-in-a-lifetime oppor¬ 
tunity. As one intern said, "It took me out of the theory of the 
classroom into the real-world application of methodology." 

From special conservation grants to national forums serving local 
museums and libraries, IMLS has helped inform the public 
and the preservation community about the dangers our 
nation's collections face—and how to rescue them. 

IMLS gratefully acknowledges the expert work 
of our cooperating partners for this initia¬ 
tive: Heritage Preservation and the American 
Association for State and Local History. 


Water damage is a serious concern for 
collecting institutions. This original Andy 
Warhol was donated (in its pictured condi¬ 
tion) to the Tucson Museum of Art, where 
it will be conserved (Cow Wallpaper © 2010 
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual 
Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New 
York, New York). 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 5 


At the Tucson Museum, a $66,000 Conservation Project Support 
grant helped relieve space problems and paid for, among other 
items, rolling storage cases that contain Mexican folk art and 
pre-Columbian textiles. LMLS is also aiding the museum's efforts 
to restore the statue of the Virgin Mary. 





“People would say, ‘I lost my wedding pictures, I lost the family Bible.’ It was their connection to their 
history,” said former IMLS director Anne-lmelda M. Radice in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. 


" Z 


Coming to the Rescue: IMLS Aids Katrina Recovery 

Hurricane Katrina devastated cities, homes, and lives. It destroyed the cultural artifacts housed in the Gulf 
region’s small and medium-size institutions—and in people’s homes. 


IMLS came to the rescue by giving aid to museums and libraries throughout the region for such activi¬ 
ties as conservation of damaged objects, educational programming, archival storage, and the establish¬ 
ment of temporary facilities for damaged institutions. IMLS collaborated with such organizations as the 
Southeastern Museums Conference, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Southeastern Library 
Network in this effort to help and speed the recovery process after the devastating hurricane. Among the 
grant recipients were the following: 


.-l ' ■ 

Mr* 

,■ t *v 


The Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum in Madisonville, Louisiana, used a $25,000 grant 
to restore and stabilize Tchefuncte River Lighthouse, the oldest and most intact of the lighthouses 
in the New Orleans area. 

Longue Vue House and Gardens in New Orleans used its $24,375 grant to repair severe flood damage 
and replace ruined servers, hard drives, and software. 

The Southeastern Library Network in Atlanta, Georgia, received $866,284 for the Staffing Gulf Coast Li¬ 
braries Project to create staff capacity and build professional development skills in 16 public library sys¬ 
tems in Louisiana and Mississippi that suffered severe damage and destruction from hurricanes Katrina 
and Rita. The grant is providing staff to run temporary library facilities in communities while permanent 
libraries are being planned and rebuilt, in addition to providing continuing education, including collec¬ 
tions care, for the staff involved. The project works in synergy with a grant from the Gates Foundation to 
support the recovery of libraries in the region. 

i The William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The 
building that housed the art museum was completely destroyed and all supporting collection 
materials were lost. A $20,882 IMLS grant helped conserve 17 damaged works, support a 
registrar to assess and recover information about the collection, and create archival storage 
for works of art. 


Timely restoration of the Tchefuncte River Lighthouse is credited with 
saving the structure from serious damage after hurricanes Gustav and 
Ike passed through just days after the exterior restoration was complete 
(Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum, Madisonville, Louisiana). 










Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation j 7 


(left) Stains on an American flag made in 1865 are gently 
sponge-cleaned off by a staff member at the American 
Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts. 


(center) Staff at the 
Walter i. Brown Media 
Archives & Peabody 
Awards Collections opened 
the cans containing the 
Kaliska-Greenblatt Home 
Movie Collection to reveal 
deteriorated films that 
were curled and shrunken 
(Athens, Georgia). 


(right & below) A flash flood sent mud and 
debris through the Hamilton Library at the 
University of Hawaii, Manoa, destroying 
approximately 110,000 maps. Fortunately, 
due to its emergency disaster plan, the li 
brary was able to save this 1589 map, Maris 
Pacifica, by Abraham Ortelius. 




The Institute of Museum and 
Library Services is the primary 
source of federal support for 
the nation’s 123,000 libraries 
and 17,500 museums. The 
Institute’s mission is to create 
strong libraries and museums 
that connect people to informa¬ 
tion and ideas. The Institute 
works at the national level and 
in coordination with state and 
local organizations to sustain 
heritage, culture, and knowl 
edge; enhance learning and 
innovation; and support profes 
sional development. 


(below) Until discovered 
and corrected, improper 
storage threatened to 
damage this photo of jazz 
trumpeter Chet Baker at 
the I.D. Weeks Library at 
the University of South 
Dakota, Vermillion. 


(left) In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many institutions on the Gulf 
Coast were forced to implement emergency collections salvage plans 
to save artifacts, like this artwork by Moses Toliver, from irreparable 
damage (Ohr O'Keefe Museum, Biloxi, Mississippi). 




(below) Books and government documents in ruins after a 2004 
flood of the Hamilton Library in Hawaii. 


























Making Connections: 

The National Conservation Summit and Forums 


This 17th-century gilt wood bodhisattva 
from Korea today resides at the Samuel 
P. Harn Museum in Gainesville, Florida. 
X-rays (performed in collaboration with 
the University of Florida, Shands Hospital) 
determined that sutra pages (religious 
documents) lay in both the head and the 
body of the figure. The pages in the body 
have been removed for conservation. 


In Gainesville, Florida, the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art 
has struggled to find space for all of the 7,500 items in its col¬ 
lection, from a 17th-century wooden bodhisattva to a crowd¬ 
drawing Monet. 

At the University of California at Berkeley Botanical Garden, 
conservation professionals have long feared the prospect of a 
wildfire laying waste to its 37 acres—and the 20,000 plants that 
make up one of the country's largest living collections. 

And, at the Georgetown County Library in South Carolina, staff 
has made a sustained effort to secure the grants and institu¬ 
tional collaboration needed to digitize 17,000 historical pieces— 
from maps and newspapers to photographs and family albums. 

What do all of these institutions have in common? They 
are staffed by a gifted, dedicated, and diverse patchwork 
of professionals. By tending to archival, library, museum, 
digital, and living collections, they are the gatekeepers of our 
nation's memories. 

And, unfortunately, they are struggling with the same issues that 
bedevil their fellow conservation experts around the country. 

From Bridgeport to Biloxi, museums and libraries face damage 
to their collections because of poor conditions and everyday 
threats—from exposure to light, humidity, and high tempera¬ 
ture to infestation by bugs and vermin. Natural disasters from 
floods to earthquakes threaten to destroy national treasures. 

And, among institutions with no emergency plan in place, col¬ 
lections can be decimated by burst water pipes or poor storage 
conditions. At the Museum of Indian and Cultural Arts in Santa 
Fe, New Mexico, a broken hot water pipe flowed unchecked 
for nearly 24 hours. More than 1,400 boxes of collections were 
temporarily submerged—including archeological material from 
9,000 B.C. 



Throughout the nation, collections at libraries, museums, 
and archives 'are at risk of being lost, destroyed, damaged, or 
rendered inaccessible," warns Allen Weinstein, former archivist 
of the United States. Weinstein notes that even the National 
Archives' collections have been hurt by floodwaters. And no 
less a national treasure than the Declaration of Independence 
has been damaged by natural aging, exposure to light, and poor 
storage. 'Operating costs—especially for energy, security, and 
personnel—are rising and increasing the challenge of providing 
the optimum storage environment. But even when resources 
are limited, we must all make it clear that preservation remains 
a high priority for our various institutions." 

As IMLS launched its Connecting to Collections initiative, the agen¬ 
cy embarked on a campaign to share resources with and inspire 
conservation professionals. From 2007 to 2010, IMLS hosted 
meetings and forums on a five-city national tour, working in 
partnership with Heritage Preservation. The goal was to bring 
together professionals from all types of collecting institutions: 
museums, libraries, archives, and those with living collections 


meeting brought together 
more than 300 museum, 
library, and archives profes¬ 
sionals in Washington, D.C. 

In a series of presentations 
and discussions, a standing- 
room-only crowd of summit 
participants exchanged ideas 
about how to improve the 
care of their collections by 
working with outside expens, 
new technologies, the public, 
and funding sources. 




A broken hot water pipe in an off-site stor¬ 
age facility caused this flood, which endan¬ 
gered important archaeological materials, 
like this Acoma jar (Museum of Indian Arts 
and Culture, Santa Fe, New Mexico). 


The gatherings helped the staffs of collecting institutions create 
networks and trade success stories with colleagues in dif¬ 
ferent types of institutions. They heard and shared 
ideas. More than 1,300 museum and library' 
professionals shared ideas about everything from 
emergency' planning to digitizing their collec¬ 
tions and preserving those digitized materials. 

'The prospect of meeting other people in our 
field, sharing what works and what doesn't, that 
is incredibly valuable for a library of my size,' says 
Dwight Mclnvaill, director of the Georgetown County 
Library 7 , a medium-sized facility that serves about 60,000 
South Carolina residents. "This exchange of ideas isn't some¬ 
thing that happens every day." 


Four representatives from 
each state—two from librar¬ 
ies and two from muse¬ 
ums—were invited to attend 
the summit at the Donald 
W. Reymolds Center for American Art and Portraiture of the 
Smithsonian Institution. They were joined by representatives 
of granting agencies, conservation organizations, and others 
knowledgeable about the preservation of collections. 
Former IMLS director Anne-Imelda M. Radice 
called the summit "a historic opportunity, not 
only to preserve our ability to look at the past, 
but to shape the way we look at the future." 

Throughout the summit, participants networked 
with conservation professionals and shared 
information and ideas. As one library’ director com¬ 
mented, 'The conference was invaluable in inform¬ 
ing us about the scope of the problem and letting us 
hear what others are doing to correct it." Another said the 
summit instilled "a sense of urgency about the need to share 
and to protea our historical materials." 


The National Conservation Summit 
June 27-28, 2007, Washington, D.C. 

In 2007, LMLS kicked off its national outreach tour with 
Connecting to Collections: The National Conservation Summit. The 


Over two days, participants heard from four different panels of 
expens discussing critical subjeas: 

Connecting to Expertise: This panel encouraged panicipants to 
reach out to cultural institutions, independent conservators. 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 9 





National 
Conservation 
Summit Goals 

■ To continue to provide 
librarians, museum profes¬ 
sionals, and conservators 
with the tools and support 
they need 

■ To help the library and 
museum communities with 
emergency training, educa¬ 
tion, conservation informa¬ 
tion, partnership building and 
developing careers for a whole 
new generation of museum, 
library, and digitization spe¬ 
cialists 

■ To continue harnessing the 
power of digital technology for 
preservation purposes and to 
make documents available via 
the click of a mouse 

■ To raise awareness among all 
Americans, especially com¬ 
munity funders, about the dire 
need for conservation and 
preservation, both in cultural 
institutions and our homes 


and other resources. H. T. Holmes, director of the Mississippi 
Department of Archives and History, shared lessons learned 
from Hurricane Katrina. Holmes saw firsthand how long-stand¬ 
ing relationships between institutions paid off in a crisis. "One 
must be vigilant all the time about making and maintaining 
connections with one's regional libraries, records repositories, 
museums, and with conservations experts," he said. "In the 
case of a disaster, you'll have no time to begin the process of 
reaching out to people in institutions who either may need 
help or may be able to offer you help." 

Connecting to Technology: This panel explored environmen¬ 
tal controls, technological items within collections, and 
using technology for collections access. James Reilly of the 
Image Permanence Institute at the Rochester Institute of 
Technology noted that state-of-the-art methods and tools 
that are new and easy to use can address what he called 
"the most urgent preservation" dilemma: environmental 
controls. But he also stressed that even the most advanced 
technology is useless if staff isn't comfortable with it. 

Connecting to the Public: This panel discussed community 
outreach programs. Kathe Hambrick-Jackson noted that 
community support was hard to find for Louisiana's River 
Road African American Museum when she founded it, but 
going out into the community and getting the word out 
helped the museum expand its collections and audience. 
"As we try to get people to visit the museum, I realized 
if they won't come see us. I'll go see them," she says. Her 
staff attended local festivals, including cooking outings 
where they presented exhibits about African influences on 
Louisiana cuisine. 


Connecting to Funders: This panel introduced 
fund-raising and donor cultivation strategies. 
Debra Hess Norris, vice provost for gradu¬ 
ate and professional education and chair of 
the Art Conservation Department at the 
University of Delaware, outlined several 
fund-raising strategies, including pursuing 
multiple funding sources and securing large 


From 2007 to 
2010, IMLS hosted 
meetings and forums on 
a five-city national tour. The 
goal was to bring together 
professionals from all types 
of collecting institutions: 
museums, libraries, 
and archives. 


and small grants simultaneously. "Fund-raising is continuous," 
she said. "It's ongoing. It's 24/7. Follow up, listen, involve, 
and collaborate." 

Preserving America's Diverse Heritage 
January 31-February 1, 2008, Atlanta, Georgia 

The Muscogee Creek Nation is planning a new cultural center 
to celebrate the heritage of the Oklahoma tribe. Among the 
thousands of planned exhibits at the new center will be bando¬ 
lier pouches and recordings of older tribe members singing in 
native languages. 

But there are two items that, according to Joyce Childers 
Bear, the Creek Nation historic preservation officer, may not 
be included in the collection. One is a series of books by the 
Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology that 
provides a family tree of the Muscogee tribe. The yellowed, torn 
pages are badly in need of preservation work. 

The other is a basket that her tribe made more than 100 years 
ago. The basket is in fair shape, but it may be the last of its kind. 
The complex diagonal weaving technique that the tribe used to 
make the basket hadn't been passed down through the genera¬ 
tions. That cultural knowledge. Bear worries, is lost forever. 

So, as Bear recalls, the invitation to the IMLS forum in Atlanta 
couldn't have come at a better time. Bear was eager to net¬ 
work with other preservation colleagues and hoped to find tips 
for everything from digitizing oral histories to finding collabo¬ 
ration partners. 

Collections like those of the Creek Nation tribe tell the 
story of America's diverse cultures. But those stories 
are imperiled. Many small and medium-sized 
institutions face overwhelming challenges, from 
handling culturally sensitive objects to dif¬ 
ficulties in attracting funding. The Atlanta 
forum. Preserving America's Diverse Heritage, 
provided both information and inspiration to 
help participants care for significant collec¬ 
tions even as they mobilize support in their 


10 Chapter 2: Making Connectio 





Family portraits, days at 
the beach, the aftermath 
of hurricanes, and hundreds 
of other images depicting 
decades of events and people 
in South Carolina are digitally 
preserved for future generations 
by the Georgetown County Library 
(Georgetown, South Carolina). 


communities. More than 250 conservation expens, govern¬ 
ment leaders, and museum, library, and archive profes¬ 
sionals attended the forum at the High Museum of Art 
and the Woodruff An Center, with a particular focus on 
the needs of small to medium-sized institutions. 


The forum's speakers were top conservators and distin¬ 
guished professionals from throughout the nation. They 
addressed issues of particular importance to diverse 
institutions—caring for objects of cultural sensitivity, 
photographs, and audiovisual materials—as well as 
issues that affect most collecting institutions, such as 
the need for improved storage and emergency planning. 
One panel discussed ways to enhance public outreach 
and education. 


Keynote speaker Lonnie G. Bunch, director of the 
Smithsonian National Museum of African American 
History- and Culture, recalled how ordinary objects have 
the power to move and challenge us while they help us 
remember. Recently, Bunch said, his museum received an 
odd new item—an old, ratty table made of cheap wood. 


The table was from a plantation in South Carolina where it 
had been used by enslaved Africans more than 100 years 
ago. It wasn't much to look at, but the old table had a rich 
cultural history. 'You can see indentations where people 
put their hands and their plates,' Bunch said, "and you can 
imagine the stories, the discussions, the despair, the con¬ 
cerns, the anger, the hope, the belief in a better day, that 
went around that table." 


Bear left the forum with new strategies for preserving 
her tribal treasures. The Creek Nation partnered 
with the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museums of 
Natural History to preserv e its documents. And 
it invited members of a local Cherokee cultural 
center to teach them how to revive diagonal bas¬ 
ket weaving. 


Connecting to Co ections: A Report to the Nation 11 




IMLS on a Five-City 
National Tour 


(right) Former director, Anne-lmelda 
Radice, speaks at the Buffalo, New York, 
forum, (far right) Attendees of the National 
Conservation Summit network at the Smith¬ 
sonian American Art Museum's Luce Center 
for American Art. 




(above) Forum attendees enjoy opportunities to make personal and 
professional connections, (right) Members of Girl Scout Troop 4563 
from Arlington, Virginia, speak at the Summit about their projects 
on conservation. 


12 


Chapter 2: Making Connections 




(above) One of the collection items featured in the Girl Scouts' 
presentation was the Queen's Quilt from lolani Palace in Honolulu, 
Hawaii. The quilt was begun by Queen Lili'uokalani and her retainers 
during her 1895 imprisonment in the palace. 


















(above) Moving grasses and a Monkey 
Puzzle tree are part of the collection at the 
University of California at Berkeley Botani¬ 
cal Garden, (right) Denver forum attendees 
walk to the Colorado History Museum for an 
evening reception, (below) Kathe Hambrick- 
Jackson, founder and executive director of 
the River Road African American Museum 
in Louisiana makes a presentation at the 
National Conservation Summit. 



(left) A Hopi basket plaque from the 
Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in 
Santa Fe, New Mexico, (below) Watercolor of 
the Diana Pool at Brookgreen Gardens by Eliot 
O'Hara (Georgetown County Library, Georgetown, 
South Carolina). 





(above) Connections Lab session at the Denver forum, (left) A blue 
macaw is present as participants sign in at the San Diego forum. The 
focus of this forum was on the care of living collections. 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 13 










DID YOU KNOW? 


Lemon Lime Flavor 

paia 

Soft Drink* 

1 ' ^Flavors 

10 Glasses 10? 

DtXI< mm * • Mrrwcxnou 

'Sherbet 



Collaboration in the Digital Age 
June 24-25, 2008, Denver, Colorado 


Packets of Kool-Aid are digitally preserved 
to tell the story of the popular drink for 
future generations (Hastings Museum, 
Hastings, Nebraska). 


At South Carolina's Georgetown County Library, 
director Dwight Mclnvaill's staff has collected 
more than 200 interviews, oral histories, and 
photographs that tell generations of local stories— 
from people who lived through the Great Depression 
to African-Americans who struggled through persecution 

and prejudice. He has video 
interviews with World War II 
veterans and hurricane sur¬ 
vivors. And he has tapes and 
photos of local families that 
trace the history of the south¬ 
ern county. 

Now, he just has to figure out 
what to do with them. 

Like thousands of collections 
across the country, those at 
Mclnvaill's library are at risk from hazards such as light, temper¬ 
ature, pests, and pollutants. And, like leaders at other institu¬ 
tions, Mclnvaill wants to transform his boxes of pictures, tapes, 
and videos into safer and storage-friendly digital works. 

"These are priceless memories and stories," he says. "We can't 
risk seeing them turn into blank tape or dust." 


59% of institutions 
have had their collections 
damaged by light; 

53% have had their 
collections damaged 
by moisture. 


Art Museum, and the Denver Public Library 
worked together to host the forum. 



‘JAMS 2 QUMTS 


Digitizing special library and museum col¬ 
lections has numerous advantages—better 
collections management, less wear and tear 
on objects, greater public access. Moving older 
works from storage to cyberspace can protect valu¬ 
able historical records from dangers such as moisture 
and insects. 

At the same time, digitizing can make fragile, obscure, or stored 
collections accessible to the public. The Hastings Museum of 
Natural & Cultural History in Nebraska has a one-of-a-kind 
collection of Kool-Aid records, celebrating the town where the 
drink was invented. But some of the inventor's notes and the 
drink's early packaging are so fragile that it's too risky to put 
them on display. "They are definite candidates for digitization 
and creating a research component for people to have access to 
without actually thumbing through the artifacts themselves," 
said curator Teresa Kreutzer-Hodson. 

But the challenges of digital technology are also formidable. 
They include cost, prioritization, and obtaining technical 
expertise. At the forum, speakers reviewed the fundamentals of 
digital content creation and preservation, emphasizing practical 
approaches to planning digital projects, increasing access to col¬ 
lections, enabling digital resources to serve multiple purposes, 
and protecting digital investments. 


Americans are increasingly using the Internet to connect to 
museum and library resources. A recent IMLS study reports 
that, in 2006, 310 million of the 1.2 billion adult visits to muse¬ 
ums were made online and 560 million of the 1.3 billion adult 
visits to libraries were made online. Yet the HHI report found 
that 60 percent of collecting institutions do not include digital 
preservation in their mission. 

That was the theme of "Collaboration in the Digital Age," the 
second IMLS forum. More than 239 people attended the Denver 
forum, which was designed to help museums and libraries 
think strategically and collaboratively about digitization and 
digital preservation. The Colorado Historical Society, the Denver 


At Georgetown County Library, Mclnvaill took advantage of a 
$350,000 grant and partnership with nine other county cul¬ 
tural agencies to create a collection of 17,000 digital images. 

The library has constructed a new wing to showcase its digital 
project, along with an enclosed cafe that shows digital museum 
highlights on eight large-screen monitors. The new digital 
exhibit has drawn crowds—and raves—from the community. 

"The fact that the public sees how you have safeguarded their 
history—their families, really—with the photos and interviews 
on the screen, that has turned heads," Mclnvaill says. "The 
public buy-in is phenomenal. They appreciate that we have pre¬ 
served their families and stories in a permanent way." 


14 


Chapter 2: Making Connections 











Amorphophallus titanium, known as the 
"Corpse Flower" due to its distinct smell, in full 
bloom at the University of California at Berkeley 
Botanical Garden. The plant typically requires 
at least seven years of growth before it 
blooms, but may go much longer. 


It's Alive! Petals to Primates: 

Preservation Challenges of Living Collections 
February 19-20, 2009, San Diego, California 

The University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley is 
nestled in a scenic California canyon. Tourists walk through its 
37 acres to see nearly 20,000 different plants. The garden con¬ 
tains a third of all native state plants, as well as exhibits from 
Mediterranean and Asian climates. And although the beauty 
of the gardens may attract visitors, the site is equally important 
for biologists and other scientists. The Berkeley garden houses 
live type-specimens—invaluable living material for the study 
of plants. 

And all of these items are a spark away from bursting into flames. 

That's the lesson director Chris Carmichael has learned as he's 
watched California wildfires approach the canyon over the last 
few years. None has ever jumped the ridge and ignited a cata¬ 
strophic blaze. But Carmichael knows his plants may be living 
on borrowed time. 

"Wildfires are something I think about every day," he says. "We 
are up in those hills, just north of the fires you see around here. 
All a fire has to do is crest one ridge and it's on top of us. It's 
never happened. But it definitely could." 

Like most living collections institutions, the Berkeley garden 
has a baseline emergency plan. But unlike animal collections, 
Carmichael's charges are hard to evacuate in a crisis. "If it hap¬ 
pens, we've always thought there's nothing we could do except 
get ourselves out of the way." 

Carmichael was one of the 179 attendees at IMLS's third forum, 
"It's Alive! Petals to Primates: Preservation Challenges of Living 
Collections," in partnership with the San Diego Zoo. The San 
Diego meeting addressed issues of pressing concern to the 
smaller institutions that are stewards of America's collections 
of plants and animals, including the following: 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 15 






■ How to stay current on new directions in collec¬ 
tions planning and management 


■ How to protect collections from natural disasters 


■ How to organize and care for the records and photo¬ 
graphs that document collections 


■ How to attract funding for collections in tough economic times 


Monet's Champ d'avoine (Field of Oats) be¬ 
fore and after conservation (Samuel P. Harn 
Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida). 


Zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens, nature centers, and living 
history farms face a range of unique challenges in caring for and 
sustaining their living collections. These issues are rarely recog¬ 
nized by the public but are of major significance to the survival 
of animals and plants. For smaller institutions, these problems 
are especially acute. Carmichael notes that even among the 
preservation community, living collections have been seen as 
the field's "poor stepchildren." 


"This field has struggled for attention," he notes. "In some ways, 
the baseline preservation concepts are the same as other collec¬ 
tions. You are protecting the collection against loss and doing it 
in a manner that both preserves the collection and doesn't harm 
the people who work with it. But it gets instantly more complex 
when you realize that our bottom line is: We are trying to keep 
things alive!" 

The panelists at the 1MLS forum helped Carmichael deal 
with emergency preparedness issues that he once found 


overwhelming. After networking with other professionals, 
Carmichael devised an emergency plan that prioritized vital 
aspects of his collection and worked with the university to map 
out evacuation strategies. "1 thought our institution had worked 
through the issues in our disaster plan," Carmichael says, "but I 
came away [from the forum] with two pages of notes and ideas 
about what more we can do to address collection preservation 
and recovery post natural disaster." 

Stewardship of America's Legacy: 

Answering the Call to Action 
June 16-17, 2009, Buffalo, New York 

Laura Nemmers has a message for the visitors to the Samuel P. 
Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida. As you stroll 
through the building, soaking in the 7,500 objects in the col¬ 
lection, enjoy the Asian art exhibits. And make sure you see 
Monet's 1890 oil canvas Champ d'avoine (Field of Oats). 

But also take a second to think about what goes on behind the 
scenes of a museum—how much effort, care, and funding it 
takes to present exhibits. 

"1 think it's important for the community to understand 
what we do beyond just putting things up on the wall," says 
Nemmers, the Harn's registrar. 

Nemmers's museum deals with many of the same issues that 
plague small and medium-sized institutions across the country. 
She doesn't have enough staff or storage space. Only about 
5 percent of her collection is photographed in the museum 
database for identification purposes and digitization. And she's 
always on the lookout for funding opportunities. 

So public awareness wouldn't seem like a high priority. But 
Nemmers, like other conservation professionals, believes 
that generating interest from her community opens doors to 
addressing other collection concerns. "When you access some¬ 
thing, you are agreeing to care for it in perpetuity. That takes a 
lot of money and a lot of time," she says. "But the public doesn't 
think about how these things come to be. I have a big interest 
in showing the public the process behind our jobs." 


16 


Chapter 2: Making Connections 






Institutions with No Emergency Plan 
for Collections 



1 _:_i_i 

0 20 40 60 80 100 

Increasing the Harn Museum's public profile was one of the 
reasons Nemmers attended the IMLS forum, "Stewardship of 
America's Legacy: Answering the Call to Action." Planned in 
collaboration with Heritage Preservation, the American Institute 
for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC), and the 
Art Conservation Department at Buffalo State College, the 
forum brought together frontline leaders in the movement to 
save America's collections for future generations. At its conclu¬ 
sion, participants had concrete information and fresh inspiration 
for maintaining the health of collections, in their own institu¬ 
tions and in their communities, at a time of reduced 
resources. 

The forum, held at the Albright-Knox An Gallery 
and the Burchfield Penney Art Center, explored 
ways that committed individuals, 
ranging from small-town librarians to directors 
of national conservation training programs, 
can work together to improve collections care. 

Panelists discussed how conservation profession¬ 
als can inspire and inform others, both nationally 


and in their communities. Speakers addressed strategies to help 
make the case for collections funding, cutting-edge topics in col¬ 
lections care, using networks to tap into expertise, and engaging 
the public in sustaining the nation's collections. 

Nemmers made contacts at the forum that led to an intern¬ 
ship exchange with an Alaska-based university program. She 
picked up storage and preservation tips. But she also used the 
forum information to launch a new public awareness exhibit 
at her museum study center. She wanted passersby to realize 
that the center was more than 
just a place to browse through 
magazines. 

But Nemmers needed a "wow 
factor," as she put it, to attract 
an audience. She started with 
an eye-catching exhibit name: 

"Lespisma Sacchrina & Other 
Agents of Deterioration." She 
strung giant banners of silver- 
fish outside the hall to illustrate 
one of the chief threats to pres¬ 
ervation. The exhibit itself was 
interactive, with microscopes 
for kids and information on 
how dim lights and cooler temperatures can save a collection. 
And she showed how the museum preserves its treasures with 
the same care that someone might safeguard a family photo¬ 
graph. Nemmers also created a colorful brochure. On Guard!, 
which explains to the public why and how collections are pro¬ 
tected at the museum. 

A lot of people said they walked out of there 
with a better understanding of what we do and 
what it means to preserve something of great 
importance," Nemmers said. "Comments like 
that make me think that we really reached 
our goal." 


DID YOU KNOW? 

2.6 billion items 
of historic, cultural, and 
scientific significance 
are not protected by an 
emergency plan and are at 
risk of serious damage if 
a disaster strikes. 


on 

GUARD 


Protecting Collections 

(^DETERIORATION 


Samuel P Ham Museum of A(l 


HancUQFF! 


i?l 



Readers of On Guard! learn how to protect 
collections (Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, 
Gainesville, Florida). 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 17 
















Carrying the Message Overseas: 

The Salzburg Global Seminar 


African historians have a saying: "When an elder dies, a 
library burns." It's meant as a nod to the continent's oral 
history tradition. Unfortunately, it's also all too accurate 
when describing the region's cultural conservation. 

Without proper resources, education, and a commitment to 
preservation, African historical treasures can be as fragile as 
a memory. Only 20 percent of Africa's museums, libraries, 
and archives have professional staff. Indeed, throughout 
the continent, there is only one staff curator or conservator 
per 500,000 people. It's a region where oral exchanges and 
face-to-face discussion are critical to preserving culture— 
and where a lack of technology, education, and emergency 
preparedness can lead to the loss of a rich heritage. 

Africa isn't alone in this cultural crisis. According to 
Carolina Castellanos, a participant from Mexico in the 
IMLS-sponsored Salzburg Global Seminar on "Connecting 
to the World's Collections: Making the Case for the 
Conservation and Preservation of Our Global Heritage," 
in her country, where climate change threatens to destroy 
historical archives from buildings to documents, cultural 
heritage is still considered "elitist." It's not included on the 
country's national agenda. Participants from Southeast Asia 
also noted that, although conservation professionals often 
participate in courses and workshops, they still need help 
with on-the-ground problem solving. 

Around the world, experts recognize that preservation of 
cultural heritage isn't just an American issue. The same chal¬ 
lenges that IMLS has helped address with museums, libraries, 
and archives in the United States plague the entire world. In 
virtually every region of the globe, resources for proper pres¬ 
ervation and treatment are sorely lacking, emergency plans 

Working groups developed reports and plans of action 
during the seminar. 


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for collections are largely nonexistent, and 
public support for and knowledge about 
conservation is weak. 

'There is a dire need for studies in con- , I 
servation in my country," says Asma 
Ibrahim, director of the Museum and 
An Gallery Department for the State 
Bank of Pakistan. Ibrahim notes that 
areas like "risk management and safeguard- 
ing.-.are something we don't have at all in 
Pakistan, and they are vers 7 important." 

In October 2009, 60 cultural heritage leaders 
from 32 countries gathered in Salzburg, Austria, 
for an historic meeting of conservation minds. The confer¬ 
ence was conducted in partnership by LMLS and the Salzburg 
Global Seminar. It included representatives from Africa, Asia, 
the Middle East, South America, Australia, Europe, and North 
America. The meeting addressed the world's most pressing con¬ 
servation dilemmas. And it developed a set of practical recom¬ 
mendations to ensure the health of collections worldwide. 

"In ten years' time, this meeting will be looked on as a land¬ 
mark in terms of how the profession is growing," said Vinod 
Daniel, the conference cochair and the head of cultural heritage 
and science initiatives at the Australian Museum in Sydney. 


professionals in those institutions face 
a slew of challenges, from exciting the 
public's interest to collaborating with 
other cultures to expanding access for 
I native peoples. Still, as many noted, 
advances in research and preserva¬ 
tion technologies are offering new 
solutions and strategies for addressing 
conservation needs. 

"The profession must advocate. It must 
understand that cultural heritage is an 
issue of world concern. It's an economic 
issue, a health issue, a growth issue," says 
Simon Cane, head of museum operations at the 
U.K.'s Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. ‘That is the 
biggest message: that cultural heritage has a major part in the 
maintenance of a civil society and all that it entails." 

In his keynote address, Lonnie Bunch, the founding director 
of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American 
History and Culture, made the case for "Why Preserve?" He 
stressed the ability of objects to communicate complexity, 
pain, and memory to a wide array of audiences. "Historical 
objects can tell the story of a nation and an individual," 

Bunch said. 


Indigenous 
Communities, 
Access, and 
Cultural 
Rejuvenation 


Advocacy 
and Public 
Awareness 


Education 
and Training 


r 

If C V 

1 

i 

KtY 

SSUE! 

s 

L 


A 


Collaboration 


Emergency 

Preparedness 


Sustainability 


Daniel stressed that no previous meeting of conservation pro¬ 
fessionals has been "as diverse as this." Convened at an 18th- 
century rococo palace called Schloss Leopoldskron, the gath¬ 
ering drew conservation specialists and cultural leaders from 
libraries and museums, as well as leaders of major conservation 
centers and cultural heritage programs from around the world. 

The group addressed central issues in the care and preservation 
of the world's cultural heritage—from moveable objects such as 
paintings, sculpture, and photographic collections to immove¬ 
able monuments such as buildings and archaeological sites, to 
intangible objects, such as oral histories. 


He relayed the story of an unusual donation to his museum: 
the coffin of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American who 
was lynched in Mississippi in 1935 for reportedly whistling at 
a white woman. Till's murder became a rallying point for the 
civil rights movement. When Bunch learned that his original 
casket was being neglected in a Chicago cemetery, he con¬ 
tacted the Till family. "This is the kind of item that provides a 
window to a story," he said. 

Throughout the seminar, several themes emerged: 

■ A paradigm shift away from traditional perceptions of cul¬ 
ture as "elitist" 



In ten years'time, this 
meeting will be looked 
on as a landmark in terms 
of how the profession 
is growing. J 

Vinod Daniel, the conference 
co-chair and the head of cultural 
heritage and science initiatives at 
the Australian Museum 


The participants agreed that collections stewardship is cen- ■ Building international connections among preservation pro- 

tral to the mission of all cultural heritage institutions. But fessionals and with policy makers and the public 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 19 




CONNECTING TO THE WORLD'S COLLECTIONS: 


The Salzburg Seminar identified and addressed the following 
crucial issues for global conservation professionals: 

■ Enhance public awareness various countries and organize 

and support for preservation effective interdisciplinary 

by making cultural heritage teams and partnerships, 

collections relevant to grass- ■ Become cultural ambassadors 
roots and indigenous communi- engaged in major governmen- 
ties and better connect library tal policy decisions on topics 

and museum collections to ranging from climate change 

societies. to social and economic 

■ Make a case for conservation in development. 

the midst of decreasing govern- ■ Strengthen emergency plan- 
ment support. n j n g an( j preparedness for 

■ Increase communication among museums and libraries to 

conservation professionals in facilitate the rescue of objects 

following catastrophic floods, 
fires, earthquakes, and man¬ 
made disasters. 

■ Consider redefining the con¬ 
cept of conservation beyond 
the "Western” model. 


■ The importance of using both top-down initiatives from insti¬ 
tutional executives and bottonr-up mandates from conservators 
and public stakeholders 


■ The increased use of technology and Internet resources, 
including social networks, blogs, e-mail, and educational 
Web sites 


■ Listening to and learning from indigenous peoples about 
safeguarding their cultural heritage 


The profession must 
advocate. It must 
understand that cultural 
heritage is an issue 
of world concern. It's 
an economic issue, a 
health issue, a growth 
issue. That is the biggest 
message: that cultural 
heritage has a major part 
in the maintenance of a 
civil society and all that 
it entails. 

Simon Cane, head of museum 
operations at the U.K.'s Birmingham 
Museum and Art Gallery 


■ The impact of climate change on preservation and the 
pressing need for heritage conservation 

The seminar produced a set of recommendations, con¬ 
tained in the Salzburg Declaration on the Conservation and 
Preservation of Cultural Heritage, which was unanimously 
endorsed by the participants. It also issued a report on the 
meeting's most relevant discussions. And the Salzburg 
Seminar has spurred action around the world. The 
Salzburg participants "are not only trained conservators, 
librarians, or people who are in decision-making posi¬ 
tions but people who want to accomplish something after 
this particular seminar," says Nancy Rogers, IMLS Senior 
Project Coordinator. 

In Croatia, the seminar's declaration has been translated 
into Croatian under the auspices of the Croatian Library 
Association and published in the Proceedings of the 13th 
Archives, Libraries, and Museums Seminar. India held a 
Commonwealth Association of Museums meeting for sum¬ 
mer 2010 at which conservation professionals introduced 
findings and recommendations from the Salzburg Seminar. 
And Israeli conservation experts are using the seminar's 
information to introduce an accreditation system. 


20 


"I was hoping the event would energize and refresh my 
thoughts, and connect me to a network of inspirational 
people," one participant said. 'It did that and more— 
giving me new ideas, new challenges, and a chance to reflect 
on how wonderful it is to be a participant in the preservation 
of our global culture." 

Out of the seminar came the Connecting 
to the World's Collections report, which 
presents a new collaborative platform for 
more effectively preserving the world's 

Chapter 3: Carrying the Message Overseas cultural heritage. 




WORKING G&Ol 


\> SUMMARIES AND NEXT STEPS 








The panels and working group sessions of the seminar focused 
on crucial issues worldwide and relayed key messages. 

KEY MESSAGE: 

Advocacy and Public Awareness 

Panelists from the U.K. and Singapore acknowledged that the 
public isn't entirely aware of preservation needs. Conservation 
professionals must help them understand the value of cultural 
objects and how preservation strengthens civil society. 

Issues addressed included the following: 

■ The cultural heritage community must be unapologetic 
about the importance of preserving a fragile heritage and 
overcome the challenges of finding funds. 

* Conservators have particular skills to bring to the table: 
knowledge of science, history, and deterioration. But they 
must improve their ability to communicate effectively. The 
public will not seek out conservators—conservators must take 
the initiative. 

■ Conservation is not for "elitists." Cultural access and 
knowledge of proper care must now be a grassroots and 
democratic initiative. 

■ The public should not be kept separated from their heri¬ 
tage with "do not touch" signs in museums and libraries. 
Efforts to preserve cultural objects can be made engaging 
and fun with interactive exhibitions, school competitions, 
and Internet resources. New programs can involve access 
for people with disabilities, such as "touch-it" exhibitions 
for blind visitors. Cultural heritage institutions should bring 
attention to the less glamorous aspects of conservation 
through open lab days and connecting conservation to the 
public's own everyday objects. 


KEY MESSAGE: 

Education and Training 

Panelists from Australia and the United States stressed that 
there is no "one-size-fits-all" model for conservation educa¬ 
tion. Conservation education programs can include multiyear 
degrees, short-term courses, workshops, internships, and 
apprenticeships. Learning about preservation can take place 
formally, informally, and socially in classrooms, the workplace, 
or online. Most important, the conservation profession 
must continue to learn about learning. 

Issues addressed included the following: 

■ Educational efforts must be located within overarching 
issues of human rights, cultural identities, climate change, 
and sustainability. 

* Technological advances such as blogs, open learning sites, 
YouTube, and Twitter should be mined for future initiatives. 
They provide opportunities for preservation outreach and life¬ 
long learning programs. 

■ In developing countries, short courses and workshops have 
been prevalent. But assessments have questioned their effec¬ 
tiveness. When participants return to their home countries, 
they often find themselves working in isolation and cut off 
from the international conservation community. Sustained 
contacts, interactions, mentoring, and other social connections 
are now the preferred avenue for effective learning and con¬ 
tinuing development. 

■ The profession must diversify. In many developed countries 
the majority of professional conservators are well-educated, 
privileged young women. Cultural heritage professionals 
must engage and empower others in preservation activities. 
Knowledge must not be siloed. Partnerships can ameliorate the 
silo effect and bring professional organizations together. 

■ The global conservation job market faces challenges. 
Departments are downsizing and some international training 
programs have been forced to close. Even in the most active 
countries, there may not be jobs for all graduates. 


i was hoping the event 
would energize and 
refresh my thoughts, 
and connect me to a 
network of inspirational 
people. It did that and 
more—giving me new 
ideas, new challenges, 
and a chance to reflect 
on how wonderful it is 
to be a participant in 
the preservation of our 
global culture. 

Salzburg Global Seminar participant 


None of us here are 
speaking on behalf of an 
institution but rather for 
the benefit of the heritage 
world in general. 

Carolina Castellanos, cultural 
heritage consultant, Mexico 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 21 



(above) Schloss Leopoidskron, home of the 
Salzburg Global Seminar. 


Lonnie Bunch, Director of the 
Smithsonian National Museum of 
African American History and Cul¬ 
ture, delivers the keynote address 
on the power of conservation to 
preserve memory. 


The Salzburg Seminar 
Highlights 


From October 28 - November 1, 2009, conservation professionals from 32 
countries met in Salzburg, Austria, to explore global themes related to 
conservation and preservation and develop recommendations for protect¬ 
ing collections around the world. "Connecting to the World's Collections: 
Making the Case for Conservation and Preservation of Our Cultural 
Heritage" was cohosted by IMIS and the Salzburg Global Seminar. 


22 


Chapter 3: Carrying the Message Overseas 










Members of the Emergency Preparedness Working Group 
discuss the need for connections between collecting 
institutions and local emergency responders. 


There is a dire need for studies in 
conservation in my country.... risk 
management and safeguarding... 
are something we don't have at all in 
Pakistan, and they are very important. 

Asma Ibrahim, director of the Museum and Art Gallery 
Department for the State Bank of Pakistan 


Seminar attendees participated 
in working groups and plenary 
sessions to discuss the impor¬ 
tance of, and the necessary 
steps toward, preserving the 
world's treasures. 


This session is very relevant to 
what I do at the University of 
Botswana...bringing forward 
the indigenous knowledge of 
our people based on memory 
and oral traditions. J 

Kay Raseroka, director of Library 
Services, University of Botswana, 
Gaborone, Botswana 


■-» t 


Asma Ibrahim from Pakistan speaks during the Educa¬ 
tion and Training working group, which discussed the 
skills, attributes, and attitudes conservators need to 
practice in a changing world. 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 23 











immovable 


Success Story: 
Brazil ' 

The Brazilian Federal Insti¬ 
tute for Cultural Properties 
works with all of the nation’s 
cultural heritage outside of 
museums. Brazil is so large 
that collaboration is imperative. 
Preserving historic sites involves 
identifying, registering, preserv¬ 
ing, promoting, and protecting a 
wide spectrum of Brazilian cul¬ 
tural heritage. A protective net¬ 
work has been established across 
27 bureaus to increase the legal 
protection for 1,117 
properties, 862 
of which are 


w ; 

f " 

W O’? 


PROTECTIVE 

NETWORK 

ESTABLISHED 


27 bureaus to increase 
the legal protection for 

1,117 properties, 

862 of which are 
immovable. 


KEY MESSAGE: 

Indigenous Communities, Access, 
and Cultural Rejuvenation 

Panel members from Australia, Canada, and Botswana dis¬ 
cussed conflicts between traditional ideas of preservation and 
a new openness to access by native peoples. They agreed that 
^ it is essential that communities feel they own their museums 
and libraries, that their stories will be told and their culture 
kept alive. 

Issues addressed included the following: 

■ Decisions made by the staff of museums or archives may 
not be sympathetic or fully informed regarding interpreta¬ 
tion and care of indigenous materials. Unilateral choices 
made by an outside group can seem to be a reminder of 
colonialism. Conservators and collections managers need to 
listen to their constituencies, earn trust, and share decision¬ 
making and control. Communities are partners, not just 
recipients of learning. 

■ Preservation must be balanced with access. Indigenous 
peoples may feel alienated if objects with powerful 
sacred or emotional content are removed from their 
contexts and kept "dust free on shelves." Using alco¬ 
hol as a cleaning agent may represent spiritual "kill¬ 
ing." Asking elders to wear gloves to handle a sacred 
object may send negative messages. 


I ■ Technology can assist elders in sharing their knowl¬ 
edge with the next generation. For example, South 
African students are being given digital cameras to take 
home and photograph and interview their grandparents. 
Laptops are being made available to Aboriginal children in 
Australia. Musicians can be recorded playing local sacred 
music. 

Elders can also be seen as conservation professionals and have 
something to teach other countries. 


24 .Chapter 3: Carrying the Mess 


KEY MESSAGE: 


Emergency Preparedness 

Preventive conservation addresses the slow and relentless 
deterioration of historical objects, from letters to buildings. But 
emergency preparedness can stave off swift and catastrophic 
destruction. Panelists from the Netherlands, Peru, and the 
United States emphasized the need for every institution to 
establish a custom-designed plan for emergencies. 

Issues addressed included the following: 

■ In a disaster, the number one priority must be saving human 
lives. But an important priority should also be the rescue of 
cultural heritage. 

■ A disaster plan must be initiated by the conservation staff. The 
plan should consider people, the building, and the collections, 
including electronic data, registration records, and archives. A 
full spectrum of catastrophes should be considered—including 
fire, flood, earthquake, and theft. The plan must be reviewed 
and revised regularly. 

■ Networks should be pre-established to monitor news, notify 
state and local officials, locate supplies and information sources 
quickly, conduct conference calls for advice and assistance, and 
stay in communication. 

■ Regular drills are key elements in emergency preparedness. 
Practice drills should involve not only the entire museum staff 
but also first responders such as fire brigades, police, and mili¬ 
tary personnel. Peruvian panelists described how a swift and 
coordinated response to an earthquake—led by teams of conser¬ 
vators, the local fire department, nuns, and colleagues—helped 
rescue museum treasures from a potential catastrophe. 

■ Not all collections are in institutions. Homeowners and care¬ 
takers of small collections should also be encouraged to estab¬ 
lish their own emergency plans. 


KEY MESSAGE: 

Collaboration 

Panelists from the Getty Conservation 
Institute in the United States, the 
International Centre for the Study of the 
Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property 
in Rome, and the Federal Institute for Cultural 
Properties in Brazil discussed the benefits and challenges of col¬ 
laboration. Collaboration involves sharing intellectual, financial, 
and human resources and depends on the participants' generos¬ 
ity and farsightedness. Collaborators may sacrifice some control 
and name recognition. But true collaboration results in substan¬ 
tial benefits for institutions willing to step out of their comfort 
zones. 

Issues addressed include the following: 

■ Components for successful collaborations include: 

— clear and meaningful objectives 

— detailed descriptions of outcomes 

— clearly identified, specific responsibilities 

— defined and agreed-upon plans of actions and deadlines 

— a common vision and approach 

— delineation of benefits expected for each collaborator 

— an understanding of the collaborators' respective strengths 
and weaknesses 

■ Barriers to collaboration include objects in too poor a con¬ 
dition to lend, conservators who will not share laboratories, 
people who wish to work alone, and people who feel they must 
compete to survive. 

■ Although collaborations should not take away from the core 
work of conservation organizations—collaboration should not 
be an end in itself—in some cultures, the process may be as 
important as the outcome. Collaborative projects generally take 
more time but better serve the common good. Each collaborat¬ 
ing institution is encouraged to work "harder and smarter." 



A septuagenarian artist guides his grandchildren 
to paint murals as part of the Orissa Village project. 

i New technologies such as social 
networking benefit future col¬ 
laborations. Emergency preparedness 
depends on collaborative efforts. There 
are also needs for international collabora¬ 
tion in research programs. 


KEY MESSAGE: 

Sustainability 

Panelists from the United States, Italy, and India empha¬ 
sized principles of responsibility in stewardship and sus¬ 
tainability. Sustainability can be viewed as the balance of 
managing different assets, resources, and concerns through 
compromise in order to contribute to the overall good. As 
responsible caretakers, the conservation community must 
maintain and preserve cultural heritage for future genera¬ 
tions. Heritage professionals must facilitate responsible 
access to material, manage its changes, and contribute to 
the health of society. 

Issues addressed include the following: 

■ Climate change is a developing issue for the conserva¬ 
tion world. It will have a dramatic effect on the deteriora¬ 
tion of building materials such as wood, metal, and glass. 
Conservators must add their voices to global discussions on 
climate change. 

■ At the same time, conservation professionals must be 
more flexible in recommendations for humidity and tem¬ 
perature standards for collections care. Small institutions 
are burdened by soaring energy expenses. Cultural heri¬ 
tage cannot be saved "at any cost." A responsible balance 
must be sought. It is difficult to turn historic structures into 
"green" museums. 

■ The Noah's Ark Project, a pan-European consortium of 
10 public and private organizations, has created a synergy 
between the study of climate change and cultural heritage 
scientific research. 




Success Story: 
India 

The Salzburg audience heard 
the story of an Indian village in 
the state of Orissa that desper¬ 
ately needed improvements to 
its roads, water supply, and oth¬ 
er necessities. As described by 
Anupam Sah of the Museum Art 
Conservation Centre in Mumbai, 
the Orissa Village project brought 
together artisans from throughout 
the region. They reconstructed 
traditional mural paintings that 
had deteriorated and disap¬ 
peared, using historical pigments, 
binders, and techniques to beau¬ 
tify the village’s walls and build¬ 
ings. The murals attracted media 
coverage and scores of tourists, 
which helped bring improvements 
to the village’s drinking water, 
sanitation, and electricity. The 
initiative, which spotlighted the 
impact of heritage conservation 
on the community’s economic 
health, is ongoing, with further 
plans for stone restoration and 
wood conservation projects in 
the region. 


| 

actions. A Report to the Na 





' -The iBooks he If: 

^, (• 9 2. *•' — • i r ■ • 

' Arming Institutions with the Resources They Need 


During the tumultuous 2008 hurricane season, two very differ¬ 
ent forces made their way toward Jacksonville, Florida, home to 
the Mandarin Museum and Historical Society. 

One was Tropical Storm Fay. Its fierce winds and devastating 
flood waters threatened to wash the small museum grounds off 
the map. 

The other was a 40-pound box of books. 

But these weren't just any books. It was the IMLS Connecting to 
Collections Bookshelf — a 23-text set of conservation must-reads 
and online resources. The texts are designed to help small and 
medium-sized institutions handle every collections care contin¬ 
gency, from emergency preparedness to digitizing documents, 
from caring for living collections to training staff and volunteers. 

The Bookshelf "is a set of 'power tools' that provide immedi¬ 
ate answers to conservation issues faced by museums, librar¬ 
ies, and archives,'' says Terry Davis, President and CEO of the 
American Association for State and Local History, the lead 
partner on the project. 

That's exactly what the Mandarin Museum needed. The small 
historical site consists largely of an 1870s farmhouse, barn, and 
sawmill as well as a renovated post office. The museum home¬ 
stead is bordered by ancient live oak trees draped with Spanish 
moss. And while the museum had the blueprint of a disaster 
plan in place, it was fairly limited, notes Mandarin Executive 
Director Andrew Morrow. 

The storm threatened to wipe out all remnants of village 
history, from the English and Spanish explorers who found¬ 
ed the region to the Civil War soldiers who were stationed 
on its grounds to the farmers and grovers who still call it 
home. Author Harriet Beecher Stowe had even wintered in 
the old village. 


With the help of the Connecting to Collections Bookshelf, the Mandarin 
Museum and Historical Society in Jacksonville, Florida, was able to 
weather a hurricane with its treasures (including the pictured 1874 
Webb-Jones farmhouse) intact. 



DID YOU KNOW? 


Luckily, the Bookshelf arrived before the hur¬ 
ricane—albeit by just days. "With the Bookshelf, 
we were able to ascertain quickly what we still 
needed to do to prepare our museum for the 
storm," Morrow says. The storm caused wide¬ 
spread flooding in area buildings. Debris and fallen 
trees littered the Jacksonville-area streets. And a 
few displaced alligators even crawled up to the 
Mandarin lawn. 

But, as Morrow recounts, "with the guidance of the Bookshelf, 
I am happy to say that we came through the storm with our 
structures and collections intact." 


Bookshelf materials have helped Nashville's 
Fisk University create a photograph preserva- 
I tion project. They have eased Utah's Park City 
Historical Society building renovation. And 
at the Fireman's Hall Museum in Philadelphia, 
access to Bookshelf material reenergized the muse 
urn's collections care committee and inspired it to 
focus attention on conservation and preservation needs, 
says museum director Carol Smith. The museum employed 
Bookshelf texts to create a budget line item for conservation- 
related activities and to upgrade the building's environmental 
conditions. "Having resources at our fingertips has made a tre¬ 
mendous difference," notes Smith. 


63 % of Bookshelf 
recipients surveyed found 
the Bookshelf “useful in 
developing or updating 
their emergency plan” 


Since its inception in 2007, the LMLS Bookshelf has been 
a vital resource for nearly 3,000 small and medium-sized 
cultural heritage institutions. Survey figures reveal that 
56 percent of Bookshelf recipients use the materials either 
weekly or monthly. 

EXCERPT FROM: Emergency Response and Salvage Wheel 

Establish salvage priorities by groups of materials, not 
item by item. A library might use subject areas or call 
numbers; an archive, record groups; and a museum, 
material groupings. 

At the Independence Township Library in Clarkston, Michigan, 
Bookshelf resources have guided a collaboration with a heritage 
museum. Together, the two groups encouraged local organiza¬ 
tions to place their historical records on long-term loan with the 
library’. The Bookshelf "helped us review our storage procedures 
and assure these organizations that our heat, light, humidity, 
and security controls are a safe environment for their trea¬ 
sures," says Independence Township Library's Julia Meredith. 

At the Reese Library Special Collections in Augusta, Georgia, 
Bookshelf items aided in a grant application to obtain data¬ 
loggers for monitoring environmental conditions. The library 
received the grant thanks, in part, to "the confidence I felt 
developing my argument using references provided by a vetted 
authority," notes Reese's Carol Waggoner-Angleton. 



The Bookshelf itself is a set of texts that are essential for col¬ 
lections care, especially at small or medium-sized libraries and 
museums. The books and other materials focus on collections 
typically found in art or history’ museums and in libraries with 
special collections, with an added selection of texts for zoos, 
aquariums, public gardens, and nature centers. They address 
topics such as the philosophy and ethics of collecting, collec¬ 
tions management and planning, emergency preparedness, 
and culturally specific conservation issues. Nearly 80 percent 
of Bookshelf recipients are small or medium-sized institutions. 
The largest percentage of recipients are history museums and 
historic houses/sites, follow'ed by academic libraries. 


The Bookshelf includes hardback and paperback books, pam¬ 
phlets, posters, and DVDs. It also includes a User's Guide that 
summarizes and indexes the resources. The User's 
Guide offers a description of each resource and a 
series of common questions about collections 
care, along with references to sections of the 
Bookshelf that provide answers. 


The Bookshelf also comes with an 
online companion, "A Guide to Online 
Resources." Organized by topic and con¬ 
taining nearly 300 links, the online guide 
continually’ updates Bookshelf content to keep 
the resources current. 


Former IMLS Director Anne-lmelda M. 

Radice poses with the Bookshelf and its 
recipients at the Kansas City Public library. 
Pictured (left to right): Dr. Radice; Mary 
Beveridge, Manager, Missouri Valley Special 
Collections; and R. Crosby Kemper, ill. Direc¬ 
tor, Kansas City Public Library. 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 27 



The care and keeping of living collections, 
like this lizard at the Denver Zoo, is dis¬ 
cussed in the Living Collections Bookshelf. 
Pictured left to right: Andy Gillock, keeper; 
Marsha Semmel, IMLS; Craig Piper, Director, 
Denver Zoo, and Nancy Rogers, IMLS. 


IMLS then convened two 
panels of experts, one for 
living collections and the 
other for core collections. The 
panelists narrowed the lists of 
recommended texts. Former 
IMLS Director Radice made 
the final selections. The selec¬ 
tions emphasized resources 
that would be accessible to 
nonspecialists and that provided the most up-to-date informa¬ 
tion. "We had to make sure core topics were covered and they 
were accessible to small and midsized museum and libraries," 
says Kristen Laise, vice president of collections care programs at 
Heritage Preservation. "We kept in mind that the people reading 
this may not have a lot of background information or knowl- 


The process of choosing 
the Bookshelf contents 
was exhaustive. IMLS and 
Heritage Preservation sur¬ 
veyed about 100 conservation 
and preservation profession¬ 
als, who recommended more 
than 300 resources. 


Special attention was paid to institutions with living collections 
of plants and animals, including aquariums, arboretums, botani¬ 
cal gardens, living history farms, and zoos. "We had to make 
sure that the resources were appropriate for them," Laise says. 
"We picked plant books that a zoo might find useful and animal 
books that botanical gardens might find useful." 


EXCERPT FROM: Caring for American Indian Objects: A Practical and Cultural Guide, p. 1 


eneral understanding of various cultural practices 
and points of view and a respect for these on the part 
of everyone involved are key to the appropriate care of 
American Indian cultural items. 


After selecting the contents of the Bookshelf, IMLS entered 
into a cooperative agreement with the American Association 
for State and Local History (AASLH) to manage the purchase, 
application, and mailing process. AASLH also helped select 
the recipients. "The reviewers looked for small and medium¬ 
sized institutions that presented clear and creative uses for the 
resources," says Terry Jackson, AASLH's Bookshelf project coor¬ 
dinator. "We wanted to see if [institutions] had a plan," Jackson 
says. "We heard great things from them. They were going to use 
it to train volunteers or share it with the little museum down 
the road or meet once a month to discuss topics out of it." 


EXCERPT FROM: IPI Media Storage Quick Reference, p. 1 

Storage is the single most important factor in determin¬ 
ing the useful life of modern information media. 

edge in some areas. Conservators can be very scientific and 
technically minded. The texts needed to be user-friendly and 
understandable to the layperson or the museum volun 
teer." Charlene Orr, executive director of Historic 
Mesquite, Inc., in Texas, which was selected to 
receive a Bookshelf in 2008, says, "With a small 
staff and budget, it is hard to amass such a col¬ 
lection of information. The Bookshelf will allow 
us to continue our mission of properly conserv¬ 
ing artifacts." 


Recipients found a wealth of practical, accessible resources. 
"The issues some of these institutions deal with can seem over¬ 
whelming," says Heritage Preservation's Kristen Laise. "If you 
have, say, a pest management problem, you are panicked, you 
want answers quickly. There's no time to wade through the 
Internet. Instead, you can go to the Bookshelf and pull out that 
one volume that will help solve your problem." 


DID YOU KNOW? 

62 % of bookshelf 
recipients surveyed found 
the bookshelf “helped 
improve conditions for 
their collections” 


Bookshelf recipients say the texts have made an 
immediate impact on their collections care. 
Before receiving the Bookshelf, only 21 percent 
rated the quality of collections care at their 
institution as "high" or "high to medium." 
That number rose to 66 percent after the 
Bookshelf arrived. Surveys showed that 63 
percent of respondents found the Bookshelf 


28 


Chapter 4: The Bookshelf 









DID YOU KNOW? 


Bookshelf FAQ's 

Why a Bookshelf? 

The IMLS Connecting to Collec¬ 
tions Bookshelf is intended to 
provide small and medium-sized 
libraries and museums with es¬ 
sential resources to improve the 
condition of their collections. 

What Does the 
Bookshelf Contain? 

The Bookshelf includes books, 
charts, and DVDs, as well as a 
guide to online resources and a 
User's Guide to all the materi¬ 
als. It addresses such topics 
as the philosophy and ethics of 
collecting, collections manage¬ 
ment and planning, emergency 
preparedness, culturally specific 
conservation issues, and the 
care of plants and animals. 
Among the recent publications 
in the Bookshelf: The AIC Guide 
to Digital Photography and Con¬ 
servation Documentation (Ameri¬ 
can Institute for Conservation 
of Historic and Artistic Works, 
2008), The National Trust 
Manual of Housekeeping (British 
National Trust, 2005), the Field 
Guide to Emergency Response 
(Heritage Preservation, 2006), 


and Essentials of Conserva¬ 
tion Biology { Primack, 2006). 

Who Received the 
Bookshelf? 

The Bookshelf has been dis¬ 
tributed free of charge to nearly 
3,000 institutions in all 50 
states, the District of Columbia, 
Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin 
Islands, Guam, and 45 countries 
overseas. Forty-two tribes in 22 
states have received the Book¬ 
shelf. Recipients include attend¬ 
ees at the National Conservation 
Summit as well as institutions that 
applied to receive it. 

How Was the Bookshelf 
Funded? 

The Bookshelf was made possible 
through a cooperative agreement 
between IMLS and the American 
Association for State and Local 
History, with support from the 
Getty Foundation, the Henry 
Luce Foundation, and the Sam 
uel H. Kress Foundation, and 
with the expert assistance of 
staff at Heritage Preservation. 


"useful in developing or updating their emergency' 
plan" and 62 percent found that it "helped improve 
conditions for their collections." 




The Beaufort County' Library in Beaufort, South 
Carolina, drew heavily on one Bookshelf text. 

Photographs: Archival Care and Management, while 
working on a grant project. With the help of 
Bookshelf materials, the library garnered its larg¬ 
est donation to date. "Having that reference book 
in-house, by itself, was worth the time it took to prepare 
the LMLS application form!" say's Beaufort's Grace Cordial. 

At the Henry’ Ford Estate on the campus of the University of 
Michigan, Dearborn, the museum's small staff relies on the 
Bookshelf as an authoritative source for answering collec¬ 
tion care questions. Curator Susan McCabe says nearly all 
areas of her museum have found a use for the Bookshelf 
resources, from the staffer charged with cleaning and 
preserving the collection to the executive creating the first 
disaster plan. McCabe has even called on the Bookshelf to 
help her instruct the undergraduate students she mentors 
each year. 

EXCERPT FROM: Photographs: Archival Care and Management, p. 257 

Preservation activities are integral to all aspects 
of managing a photographic collection—from 
appraisal through research use and exhibition— 
and include systematic approaches to assessing and 
prioritizing preservation needs. 


Before receiving the 
Bookshelf, only 
21% rated the quality of 
collections care at their 
institution as “high” or “high to 
medium.” That number rose 
to 66% after the 
Bookshelf arrived. 


•1 

/ 


The only reference materials Alicia Woods, the curator of 
collections at the Washington State Parks and Recreation 
Commission in Olympia, previously had on hand were books 
she had kept from her school days. The Bookshelf arrived 
just in time for her to begin developing the Parks' Collections 
Facility. "The Bookshelf has helped us create a nice little library 
of resource material that is very user-friendly, covers virtually 
all our needs, and answers questions frequently," Woods says. 
'This provides comforting peace of mind as we end each day r , 
knowing we are doing the right thing, the right way." 


An IMLS Bookshelf recipient proudly dis¬ 
plays one of her institution's new materials 
on conservation. 



Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 


29 



The Bookshelf 
Bibliography 

The texts shown comprise the 
IMLS Bookshelf, including texts 
specifically geared toward living 
and nonliving collections. 


The Core Collection 





Adelstein, Peter Z. IPI Media Storage 
Quick Reference. Rochester, NY: Image 
Permanence Institute, 2004. 



American Institute for Conservation of 
Historic and Artistic Works. TheAlC Guide 
to Digital Photography and Conservation 
Documentation. Washington, DC: 
American Institute for Conservation of 
Historic and Artistic Works, 2008. 



Framework for 
Preservation 
of Museum 
Collections 


1*1 =7 Sr Canada 

Canadian Conservation Institute, 
Department of Canadian Heritage. 
Framework for Preservation of Museum 
Collections. Wall chart. Ottawa: Canadian 
Conservation Institute, 2004. 



Gorman, G. E„ and Sydney J. Sheep, eds. 
Preservation Management for Libraries, 
Archives and Museums. London: Facet 
Publishing, 2006. 



Capitalize on Collections Care 


Generate New Contributions 
Increase Support 
Foster New Audiences 


Heritage Preservation, Inc. Capitalize on 
Collections Care. Washington, DC: Heritage 
Preservation Inc., 2007. 



Heritage Preservation, Inc. Emergency 
Response and Salvage Wheel. Washington, 
DC: Heritage Preservation Inc., 2005. 



Heritage Preservation, Inc. Field Guide to 
Emergency Response. Washington, DC: 
Heritage Preservation Inc., 2006. 


AFRICAN AMERICAN ART 



International Review of African American 
Art: Collecting, Conservation, and 
Collaborations, 22.1. Hampton, VA: 
Hampton University Museum, 2007. 


A Legal 
Primer 
on 

Managing 

Museum 

Collections 






A Practical and Cultural Gaide 



Malaro, Marie C. A Legal Primer 
on Managing Museum Collections. 
Qashington, DC: Smithsonian 
Institution Press, 1985. 


National Park Service. Museum Handbook 
Part I: Museum Collections. Washington, 
DC: National Park Service, 2006. 


Ogden, Sherelyn, ed. Caring for American 
Indian Objects: A Practical and Cultural 
Guide. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical 
Society Press, 2004. 


Ward, Philip. The Nature of Conservation: 
A Race Against Time. Marina del Rey, CA: 
The Getty Conservation Institute, 1986. 


30 Chapter 4: The Bookshelf 




















































Living Collections 



Burgess, Warren E. Dr. Burgess's Mini 
Atlas of Marine Aquarium Fishes, 2d ed. 
Neptune, NJ:TFH Publishing, 1992. 



Leadley, Etelka, and Jane Greene, eds. 
The Darwin Technical Manual for Botanic 
Gardens. London: Botanic Gardens 
Conservation International, 1998. 



Secretariat of the Convention on Biological 
Diversity. Global Strategy for Plant 
Conservation. Montreal: Secretariat of the 
Convention on Biological Diversity, 2002. 


Nonliving Collections 


Expert Panel 



Fowler, Murray E., and R. Eric Miller. Zoo 
and Wild Animal Medicine, 6th ed. St. 
Louis, MO: Elsevier, 2007. 



Promoting 
Preservation 
Awareness 
in Libraries 

A Sourcebook for 
Academic. Public. 

School and 
Special CoSechons 


Jeanne M Drew vs 
and Kibe A Page 


Drewes, Jeanne M., and Julie A. Page, 
eds. Promoting Preservation Awareness in 
Libraries. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 
1997. 



Ellis, Margaret Holben. The Care of Prints 
and Drawings. New York: AltaMira Press, 
1995. 



Primack, Richard B. Essentials of 
Conservation Biology, 4th ed. Sunderland, 
MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc., Publishers, 
2006. 



Long, Jane S., and Richard W. Long. Caring 
for Your Family Treasures. New York: Harry 
N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 2000. 


National Trust. The National Trust Manual 
of Housekeeping: The Care of Collections 
in Historic Houses Open to the Public. 
Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006. 



World Association of Zoos and Aquariums. 
Building a Future for Wildlife: The World Zoo 
and Aquarium Conservation Strategy. Bern, 
Switzerland: WAZA Executive Office, 2005. 



PHOTOGRAPHS 



Ritzenthaler, Mary Lynn, and Diane L. 

Vogt O'Connor. Photographs: Archival Care 
and Management. Chicago: Society of 
American Archivists, 2006. 


Two panels of experts in con¬ 
servation and preservation were 
convened by I MLS to recom¬ 
mend materials for the Book¬ 
shelf, one specifically for living 
collections and the other for the 
core texts and materials for non¬ 
living collections. The titles of 
the panelists are those they held 
at the time of the panels. 

Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa, Director of 
the William and Margaret Kilgarlin Center 
for Preservation of the Cultural Record, 
University of Texas, Austin 

Jeanne Drewes, Chief of Binding and 
Collections Care, Library of Congress 

Catharine Hawks, objects conservator, 
private practice 

Melissa Marsh Heaver, Registrar, Fire 
Museum of Maryland 

Wendy Jessup, conservator, private 
practice 

Sylvan Kaufman, Conservation Curator, 
Adkins Arboretum 

William Langbauer, Director of Science & 
Conservation, Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG 
Aquarium 

Debra Hess Norris, Chairperson, 
Department of Art Conservation, Associate 
Dean of Social Sciences and History, 
Winterthur/University of Delaware 

Brandie Smith, Interim Director of 
Conservation and Science, Association of 
Zoos and Aquariums 

Daniel J. Stark, Executive Director, 
American Public Gardens Association 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 31 







































State-to-State: 

Statewide Partnership Grants Make a Mark Across the Map 



Two Angels and Three Shepherds by Allan Crite is in the collection of the 
African American Museum of Philadelphia, one of many institutions that 
participated in Pennsylvania's statewide survey, conducted by the Conser¬ 
vation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts. 


In spring 2010, Rhode Island was deluged with storms and 
flash floods. Over a period of three weeks, rains dumped 
more than eight inches of water in cities such as Providence 
and Cranston. The Pawtuxet River crested at nearly 12 
feet above flood levels. Major roads were closed. Homes 
were evacuated. Schools were shut down. And tens 
of thousands of Rhode Islanders were left without 
power. President Obama ordered federal aid to support 
state and local response efforts. Federal Emergency 
Management Agency (FEMA) officials were called in 
to help. 


At that time, spring 2009, most small and medi¬ 
um-sized Rhode Island cultural heritage institu¬ 
tions were laboring under a 20-year-old disaster 
plan. It was a photocopy of a Word document 
with out-of-date information and no contact 
numbers for FEMA or local emergency manage¬ 
ment teams. Although few preservation leaders 
realized it, the state's collections—in libraries, 
museums, historical societies, municipal offices, 
and archives—were at serious risk. Floods were 
far from their only worry. Anything from fire to 
mold to broken pipes could have sparked a col¬ 
lections catastrophe. 


The state's cultural institutions weren't entirely 
spared. Libraries and archives suffered some flood 
damage and some of them incurred minimal losses. 
Most were thankful the storms hadn't struck a 
year earlier. 










The Rhode Island floods were a stark reminder that everyone needs a disaster plan and cultural 
institutions are no exception. Luckily, when the storms hit, Rhode Island preservation leaders had 
already begun preparing for the worst. 

The Rhode Island Office of Library and Information Service (OLIS), in partnership with the State 
Archives, had been awarded one of the first S40,000 Statewide Planning Grants from IMLS. Pan 
of the Connecting to Collections initiative, the grant was one of a series of awards that the Institute 
has provided to organizations in 57 states and territories since 2008. For three years, these grants 
have fostered networks among organizations in states, commonwealths, and territories. The 
grants are designed to encourage people and institutions in each state to cooperate on a plan to 
benefit all. They have boosted efforts to provide safe conditions for collections, develop emergency 
plans, assign responsibility for collections care, and marshal public and private support for collec¬ 
tions care. 

In Rhode Island, the grant was primarily used to bring the state's cultural institutions together to 
collaborate on an online disaster plan template. The institutions adapted the Northeast Document 
Conservation Center's dPlan, which had received support from LMLS. OLIS convened a steering 
committee including, among others, representatives of cultural heritage institutions, courts, the 
state risk manager, and the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency. The group proposed a 
dPlan that radically updated the state's outmoded disaster template. 

Under the new plan, explains OLIS library program manager Donna Longo DiMichele, concise 
and complete information is provided on contacting local emergency' management personnel, 
police, fire, and rescue teams. The new plan even includes GPS coordinates to help FEMA arrive 
rapidly at disaster scenes. 

OLIS trained more than 200 people—"From tiny libraries and historical societies to large academic 
libraries and universities," DiMichele says—on implementing the dPlan. The grant recipients 
also publicized the planning process among state and local emergency management agencies, 
first responders, and the heritage community. DiMichele has even fielded calls from libraries and 
walked them through caring for wet materials with methods such as book fanning and using blot¬ 
ting paper. 

In Pennsylvania, the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) w'as awarded 
a 540,000 grant to create a state strategic preservation plan. Pennsylvania's historic collections 
range from artifacts that tell the story of writing the Declaration of Independence to the records 
of hundreds of small communities. But preservation experts agree that millions of Pennsylvania's 
most important historic holdings are at risk. The financial resources available to care for them are 
limited and, in many cases, shrinking. 



Poster depicting irreplaceable treasures included in the statewide survey of 
Pennsylvania's collections. 


With the help of the IMLS grant, CCAHA—working closely with the Pennsylvania Historical and 
Museum Commission, the Pennsylvania Federation of Museums and Historical Organizations, 
and PALINET, a cooperative membership association of libraries and information centers in the 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 


33 





















Statewide 
Planning Grant 
Spotlight 

Alaska Archives 
Rescue Project 

Alaska Division of Libraries, 
Archives, and Museums, 

Juneau 

Award Amount: $40,000 

Partners: Alaska Historical 
Collections, Alaska Historical 
Society, Alaska State Archives, 
Alaska State Museum, Hoonah 
Indian Association, Museums 
Alaska, Tuzzy Consortium Li¬ 
brary, and University of Alaska, 
Fairbanks. 

Overview: Grant funds were used 
to hire a planning coordinator 
to collect and store information 
on collections, collection man¬ 
agers, and available expertise 
in collections-holding entities 
in Alaska. The coordinator 
developed a volunteer network 
called the Archives Rescue 
Corps, which works to protect 
the state’s treasured collec¬ 
tions, and held a series of 
collections care meetings/ 
workshops. 


Statewide 
Planning Grant 
Spotlight 

Georgia's Heritage 
Health Index 

Georgia Archives, Morrow 

Award Amount: $40,000 

Partners: Georgia Association 
of Museums and Galleries, 
Georgia Department of Eco¬ 
nomic Development, Georgia 
Emergency Management 
Agency, Georgia Humanities 
Council, Georgia Public Library 
Service, Society of Georgia 
Archivists, and Southeastern 
Library Network. 

Overview: The purpose of this 
project was to conduct a state¬ 
wide survey of cultural institu¬ 
tions to measure the state of 
collections care and readiness 
for emergencies in Georgia. 

The survey and resulting da¬ 
tabase addressed key recom¬ 
mendations of the Heritage 
Health Index report. The goal 
of the planning project was 
to create the infrastructure 
for comprehensive identifi¬ 
cation and ongoing assess¬ 
ment of Georgia’s cultural 
institutions. 




mid-Atlantic—created and distributed a survey to more than 
1,000 state cultural institutions. 


The survey looked at the concerns of various organizations, 
from historic houses to museums to research libraries. In 
addition, a task force held eight focus groups throughout the 
state and met one-on-one with 120 preservation profession¬ 
als to talk about their greatest challenges. In all, says CCAHA 
executive director Ingrid Bogel, 4,000 Pennsylvania institu¬ 
tions were represented, giving the project a comprehensive 
view of the state's collection management situation. 

The study covered sites that operate on shoestring budgets 
and are entirely run by volunteers, as well as world-class 
museums and universities. In all cases, frustration emerged 
from both survey responses and focus group discussions, 
Bogel says. Institutions continually expressed their need 
for increased support and assistance. "Everyone felt under¬ 
resourced, both in terms of needing more hands and need¬ 
ing more money," Bogel says. "That was not a surprise." 

What did shock the surveyors, Bogel says, was how 
little most institutions knew about their own collections 
and how to care for them. There was still widespread 
need for inventory and catalog management, especially 
among smaller institutions. "The majority of institutions 
did not have emergency plans in place," Bogel notes. 

"There was also very little access to resources for doing 

I conservation treatment." 

Bogel says institution leaders were determined to preserve 
Pennsylvania's heritage, even as they relayed stories of 
their struggles with a chronic lack of resources. They also 
seized the opportunity to suggest solutions and strategies and 
expressed a willingness to cooperate. "There was a consistent 
feeling that any new strategies would need to be relevant for 
the small institutions as well as the large, and would need 
to reach out to all regions of the state, not just the heavily 
populated urban areas," Bogel says. Like other grant projects 
from Rhode Island to Oklahoma to California, Bogel's initia¬ 
tive stressed that institutions working together can accomplish 
almost any preservation goal. Or, as she puts it, "We learned 





Rhode Island used their Statewide Planning 
and Implementation Grants to execute 
dPIan-RI, an online disaster-planning tem¬ 
plate for use by Rhode Island collections- 
based cultural heritage organizations. 









National Impact of Connecting to Collections: A Call to Action 



• Grant recipients: Institutions awarded Statewide Planning or 
Implementation Grants or American Heritage Preservation Grants 

O Event attendees: Institutions that sent representatives to the 
National Conservation Summit, a Connecting to Collections forum, 
or a "Connecting to Collections: Raising the Bar" workshop 

• Bookshelf recipients: Institutions that received the IMLS Connecting 
to Collections Bookshelf 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 35 














that a rising tide of strategies and resources 
can lift all boats." 

From Alaskan archives develop¬ 
ing grassroots volunteer networks 
to Tennessee libraries surveying the 
environmental conditions of storage 
sites, from a South Dakota heritage 
fund sharing collection care resources 
to Oklahoma museums appointing a 
Cultural Trust Task Force, the IMLS 
Statewide Planning Grants have 
touched cultural institutions around 
the country. Since the grants began in 
2008, IMLS has awarded funds in every 
state and in territories such as Guam and 
the Virgin Islands. Altogether, the grants 
have totaled more than $2.1 million. 




TOP 
PROPOSALS 
INCLUDED: 




Proje^^ 
goals tied 
directly to the 
findings 
of the HHI. 


“Major players” 
within the state 
and reached out to 
institutions of many 
sizes in an inclusive 
planning process. 


A broad array 
of partners were 
engaged across the state 
with relevant collections 
oversight or disaster 
preparedness 
responsibility. 


The IMLS statewide collaborative planning 
and implementation grants address the 
8 recommendations of the HHI. All of the 
plans supported foster effective partner¬ 
ships among collections organizations, 
whether they are ongoing or new 
collaborations. The projects all dem¬ 
onstrate how organizations can work 
together to respond collectively to the 
HHI recommendations. 


According to IMLS officials, the most out¬ 
standing proposals demonstrated the following 
characteristics: 

» Project goals tied directly to the findings of the HHI. 


In 2010, Statewide Implementation Grants were offered 
for the first time to support activities identified through the 
Planning Grants. The Rhode Island consortium will use its 
Implementation Grant to develop tools and training opportuni¬ 
ties for its disaster plan. California, Connecticut, Delaware, and 
North Carolina also received implementation grants totaling 
more than $1.2 million. 

With its $250,000 Implementation Grant, the California 
Association of Museums (CAM) is focusing on sharing the HHI 
recommendations among California's diverse heritage institu¬ 
tions. The implementation plan includes convening several 
disaster preparedness and response workshops to attract every¬ 
one from library and museum professionals to archeologists 
and archivists. "They have a lot in common. They are doing 
the same things, just on different scales," says CAM executive 
director Celeste DeWald. At the meetings, disaster plans are 
being shared and cultural heritage professionals are pledging to 
collaborate on an emergency response network. "We recognized 
that an institution by itself is weaker than an institution that 
has a lot of friends," DeWald says. 


■ The application engaged a broad array of partners 
across the state, including museums and libraries of many 
disciplines, archives, representatives from the philan¬ 
thropic community, and state government officials with 
relevant collections oversight or disaster preparedness 
responsibility. 

■ The proposed partnership coalition included the "major 
players" within the state and reached out to institutions of 
many sizes in an inclusive planning process. 

Having different kinds of institutions at the table to address 
a common challenge has had surprising benefits in many 
states. As Susan Feller, the project manager for the plan¬ 
ning grant led by the Oklahoma Department of Libraries, 
puts it, "this is the first time library and museum staff have 
ever attended networking meetings together." Valuable con¬ 
nections were made at planning meetings, which led. Feller 
says, to libraries and museums partnering at community 
events. "Most importantly, there was an exchange of infor¬ 
mation regarding resources and methodologies," she says. 

"In my time at the Oklahoma Department of Libraries, mil¬ 
lions of dollars have flowed through my hands for a variety of 
programs. I can tell you that none have had the impact or the 
rate of return as the $40,000 Connecting to Collections grant." 


I Statewide 

Implementation 
f Grant Spotlight 

The California Association 
of Museums, Santa Cruz 

Award Amount: $250,000 

Partners: California Historical 
Society, California State Archives, 
California State Parks, California 
Library Association 

Overview: The partners have 
undertaken a statewide preserva¬ 
tion information, education, and 
training project, called the Califor¬ 
nia Preservation Assistance Service 
(CPAS). CPAS will deliver the 
following services to the California 
heritage community: 

■ a 24/7 collection emergency ho¬ 
tline, plus e-mail and telephone 
reference; 

■ eight two-day workshops on in¬ 
stitutional disaster preparedness 
and response; 

■ eight disaster networking work¬ 
shops, using scenario planning; 

■ four preservation project design 
workshops; and 

■ a Web site and a collections 
stewardship campaign 
targeted to trustees. 


36 


Chapter 5: State-to-State 




Connecting to Co actions: A Report to the Nation 37 


Thomas Jefferson wrote that it was "the duty of every good citi¬ 
zen to use all the opportunities which occur to him...or her, for 
preserving documents relating to the history of 
our country." 

The HHI reported that 4.8 billion arti¬ 
facts held in public trust—housed 
everywhere from large art musc¬ 
le urns and small libraries to uni¬ 
versity archives and tiny town 
halls—require collections care. 
Whether it's our nation's most 
important documents or small 
town charters, whether it's 
centuries-old maps or genera¬ 
tions of photographs, each of 
these treasures must be protected 
and preserved. Within the collec¬ 
tions community, everyone has a 
role to play in ensuring the future of 
our cultural heritage. And a call to action 
can spark the public's interest and advocacy. 

From major art museums in Arizona to middle 
. school libraries in Washington, D.C., from 
botanical gardens in California to historical 
archives in South Carolina, from Native 
American cultural centers to traditional 
l Hawaiian conservation efforts, the 

Connecting to Collections initiative has had 
an impact on thousands of cultural insti¬ 
tutions across the country, all engaged in 
addressing Jefferson's "duty." 




With the support of generous 
donors, 1902 Oentzel carousel 
horses are being restored to 
their original beauty at the 
Shelburne Museum in Shel¬ 
burne, Vermont. 




IMLS Preserves the Treasures 
of the Past and Supports the 
■t£# Institutions that Protect them 








An IMLS grant funded the digitization of 
these artifacts from Buffalo Bill's life (the 
head of the last buffalo he shot, his Stetson 
hat, and an image of his grave, circa 1920), 
which are now easily accessible in a com¬ 
puterized catalogue (Buffalo Bill Museum 
and Grave, Denver, Colorado). 


Building on the eye-opening figures of the 
HHI report, Connecting to Collections has raised 
public awareness of the importance of caring 
for our national treasures and underscored 
the fact that these collections are essential 
to the American story. Larry Reger, presi¬ 
dent of Heritage Preservation, notes the fact 
that a federal agency "had the foresight to 
act immediately on the results of the Heritage 
Health Index report, and that gave credence to 
the entire collections care effort 
and moved it forward. The 
cumulative effects of the vari¬ 
ous components of the initia¬ 
tive have been amazing, as they 
have interconnected, built on one 
another, and permeated the museum, library, 
and archives field." 

Whether by leading the charge in protecting frag¬ 
ile pieces of history or encouraging conservation 
professionals to work together on solving 
preservation puzzles, IMLS has endeavored 
to create strong libraries and museums that 
connect people to information and 
ideas. "This initiative is essentially 
about building a community—a 
community of ideas, a commu¬ 
nity of resources, a community 
of curators and archivists and 
librarians and scientists and the 
public," says Debra Hess Norris, Chair of 
the Art Conservation Department at the University of 
Delaware. "It's a unique coordinated response to what 
is a crisis in conservation." 

"IMLS is in the great position where they can disseminate 
information, research and materials to institutions around the 
country—particularly smaller ones that probably have little 
access to resources and maybe do not have knowledge about 
[conservation] issues," says Ellen Holtzman, program director 


for American art for the Henry Luce Foundation. Although 
the Luce Foundation makes few grants to government agen¬ 
cies, Holtzman says it was compelled to financially support the 
IMLS's Connecting to Collections efforts, particularly the National 
Summit and the Bookshelf, since Connecting to Collections dove¬ 
tailed with Luce's own mission to support the care and treat¬ 
ment of art. "We are thrilled at the expansiveness and compre¬ 
hensiveness of [IMLS's] outreach," Holtzman says. "We were 
happy to be a part of this impressive initiative that reached so 
many institutions." 

1 Connecting to Collections built upon 
IMLS's ongoing efforts to care 
for our cultural heritage. Each 
year hundreds of cultural institu¬ 
tions across the country apply for 
and receive grants and technical 
assistance to help care for collec¬ 
tions. One example is the Buffalo 
Bill Museum and Grave. Half a 
million people visit the museum 
each year, but museum director 
Steve Friesen reports that they 
were in danger of never seeing 
some of the museum's most interesting 
historical items—like Sitting Bull's peace 
pipe and the head of the last buffalo Bill 
ever shot. The museum was under-staffed 
and overcrowded. "We were exploding at 
the seams," says Friesen. In addition to battling 
environmental issues like controlling humidity's effect 
on its collections, the museum simply had no storage space for 
all of its artifacts. 

To improve his museum's collection care, Friesen applied for an 
IMLS grant designed to support database projects, an agency 
initiative that has aided institutions since 2004. With the help 
of IMLS, the museum database was quickly transformed from 
a stack of hand-written papers and incomplete catalogs to a 
computerized, searchable system with digital photographs of 
every item. 


38 


Chapter 6: The Impact and the Future 


"We are a museum with a small staff and a small budget," 
Friesen says. "We couldn't have done all the cataloging and 
everything else without LMLS. People may not think about 
what it takes to care for these items, but when you point it out 
to them they are very concemed.They want to get involved. 
They want to make sure these exhibits are here for their chil¬ 
dren and grandchildren." 

Projects like these—as well as LMLS's 2 5-year history of award¬ 
ing Conservation Project Support grants—laid the foundation 
for the Connecting to Collections initiative. Through Connecting to 
Collections. LMLS and its partners have encouraged and invigo¬ 
rated the stewards of cultural collections. Heritage Preservation's 
Lam- Reger sees as a result "a significant heightened aware¬ 
ness of the importance of collections care in cultural heritage 
institutions nationwide and a determination to do something 
about it." 

LMLS is proud to issue this report to the nation on Connecting 
to Collections: A Call to Action. One of the most important things 
to note about the initiative is that it built strategically on 
LMLS's existing programs and mission. The lessons learned, 
by both the field and the agency’, will be sustained though 
continuous opportunities for LMLS funding as well as by 
ongoing efforts to widen the community' of practice with new 
opportunities for networking, communications, and training. 
LMLS and its partners will continue to make an impact on the 
preservation landscape. 

Continuing Support 

LMLS will continue to support conservation and preservation 
through grants programs such as: 

■ American Heritage Preservation Grants: A special initiative 
of the Conservation Project Support Program, in partnership 
between LMLS and the Bank of America Foundation. 

■ Statewide Implementation Grants: to implement the plans or 
models created with the Statewide Planning Grants. 

■ The Conservation Assessment Program: An LMLS program, 
operated in conjunction with Heritage Preservation, that 


supports a two-day site visit by a conservation profes¬ 
sional to selected museums. 

■ Conservation Project Support: An LMLS program 
that awards grants to help museums develop and 
implement a logical, institution-wide approach 
to caring for their living and material collections. 

These also include museum and library grants for 
training, digitization, and other preservation activities. 

■ National Leadership Grants, which produce new 
research, strategies, and access to data on preservation. 

LMLS has raised awareness about the need to support conserva¬ 
tion projects. Other organizations have recently answered the 
call to action, including: 


Participants 
from all 

50 states attended 
the four National 
Tour forums. Visitors 
from China and 
Mexico were also 
included. 


A 



k 

BY THE 
UMBER 




57 statewide 

planning 
grants and 
5 implementation 
grants awarded. 


107 

American 

Heritage 

Preservation 

Grants 

awarded. 




■ The Foundation of the American Institute for the 
Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (FAIC): An LMLS 
grant to FAIC supported an international roundtable called 
"The Plus/Minus Dilemma: A Way Forward in Collections 
Environmental Guidelines" in May 2010. This gathering focused 
on the appropriate guidelines for environmental conditions in 
archives, library' special collections, and museums in the U.S. 
The audience was approximately 600 conservation professionals 
and the discussion was recorded and posted on the "ArtBabble" 
Web site. 


■ LMLS joined with the Smithsonian Institution and the other 
cultural agencies (the National Endowment for the Arts, the 
National Endowment for the Humanities, and the President's 
Committee on the Arts and the Humanities) to support 

the Haitian Cultural Recovery' Project after the devastating 
earthquake in January 2010. LMLS funds are supporting the 
American Institute for Conservation's "Conservation Collections 
Emergency’ Team," which is sending volunteer conservators to 
Haiti to help recover damaged cultural and historic artifacts. 

■ LMLS also partnered with the Association for Library’ 
Collections and Technical Services of the American Library 
Association and the Library' of Congress in launching the inau¬ 
gural National Preservation Week on May 9-15, 2010. With the 
motto "Pass it On!", Preservation Week's goal is to strengthen 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 39 



Almost 

3,000 sets of the 

IMLS Connecting to 
Collections Bookshelf 
placed in museums, 
libraries, and 
archives. 


42 tribes in 

22 states have 
received the 
Bookshelf. 


Approx. 

1,000 smaller 
museum, libraries, 
and archives were 
represented at the 
National Summit and 
the National Tour 
forums. 


the general public's awareness of preservation issues and high 
light the role libraries, museums, and archives play in con¬ 
necting people to preservation information and expertise. It 
builds on the interest of individuals, families, and community 
organizations in saving their personal documents and collec¬ 
tions. See www.ala.org/preservationweek. 

■ Save America's Treasures, administered by the National 
Park Service in collaboration with the President's Committee 
on the Arts and the Humanities, the National Endowment 
for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, 
and IMLS, helps to preserve cultural treasures through- 
I out the U.S. See www.nps.gov/history/hps/treasures. 

Conclusion 

Although it is too early to predict the long-term effect 
that this call to action on behalf of America's collec¬ 
tions will ultimately have within the museum, library, 
and archives community, it is clear that important con¬ 
versations have occurred and continue to take place both 
within the U.S. and abroad. 


An indication of impact is evident from a recent series of 
conversations with summit and forum participants. Nearly 
all reported updated collections policies, work on emer¬ 
gency plans, and new efforts to raise public awareness. 

They are interested in joining larger efforts to digitize their 
collections and seek additional leadership in forming cross¬ 
institution partnerships. Best of all, many reported leaving 
the convenings feeling recharged, with a renewed sense of 
enthusiasm for the work ahead. In short, the energy and 
dedication of people across the country entrusted to care 
for collections is a tremendous national asset and engenders 
great confidence that the next HHI will tell a different story. 

The care of collections is an urgent, living issue that will 
continue to be informed by new scientific developments in 
conservation, such as data on the effects of global warming 
on artifacts and monuments; collaborative efforts worldwide; 
ongoing work in the area of conservation standards; and com 
munity engagement activities. These are the new frontiers, 


40 


Chapter 6: The Impact and the Future 


Connecting to Collections: 
A Call To Action 


■ Impacts & Outcomes 

■ ■ Almost 3,000 sets of 

the IMLS Connecting to 
Collections Bookshelf placed 
in museums, libraries, and 
archives nationwide. Nearly 100 
sents were sent abroad, many of 
them to developing countries. 

■ 42 tribes in 22 states have 
received the Bookshelf. 

■ Approximately 1,000 smaller 
museum, libraries, and archives 
represented at the National 
Summit on conservation and 
the four regional forums, each 
focused on a crucial issue in col¬ 
lections care. 

■ Participants from all 50 states 
attended the four National Tour 
forums. Visitors from China and 
Mexico were also included. 

■ 57 statewide planning grants 
and five implementation grants 
awarded. Museums, libraries, 
and archives in these states are 
engaged in understanding the 
collections care needs in their 
states and planning ways to 
meet them. 

■ A new grant program— 
American Heritage 
Preservation Grants— 


created, in partnership with the 
Bank of America Foundation; 

107 awards for the conservation/ 
preservation of objects made in 
two rounds of competition. 

■ Increased number of applications 
that have collections/archival 
positions or activities for African 
American History and Culture 
grants at IMLS. 

■ “Connecting to Collections: 
Raising the Bar” —two work¬ 
shops involving 100 libraries, 
museums, and archives in 14 
states, the workshops included 
the offer of a “Heritage Advocate 
Award” to one institution from 
each workshop for outstanding 
accomplishments in improving 
collections care or conducting 
public outreach about the signifi¬ 
cance of its collections. A series 
of webinars informed by the 
workshops will be released. 

■ Over a dozen public and private 
partners joined IMLS at the na¬ 
tional level to support this effort. 

■ Extensive press coverage of the 
initiative, including articles in 
USA Today and the Wall Street 
Journal as well as local pub¬ 
licity in print, broadcast, and 
social media. 




involving a window into our past and a look 
ing glass into the future, so that the objects 
held in our cultural heritage institutions 
can continue to tell our individual and 
collective stories for the benefit of future 
generations. 


Acknowledgments 

IMLS is pleased to acknowledge the 
many organizations and individu¬ 
als that contributed to the success of 
Connecting to Collections. y . 

The IMLS Connecting to Collections ini- ^ ^ 
tiative owes a great debt to its major 
partners, including: our fellow federal 
agencies, the President's Committee on 
the Arts and the Humanities, the National 
Endowment for the Arts, and the National 
Endowment for the Humanities, and our 
private partners, the Getty Foundation, the 
Henry Luce Foundation, the Bank of America 
Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 
the Legler-Benbough Foundation, the UPS 
Foundation, the John R. Oishei Foundation, 
the Fatta Foundation, the Andrew W. 

Mellon Foundation, the Peck Stacpoole 
Foundation, Walt Disney World and Disney's 
Animal Kingdom, the Baird Foundation, the 
Chanticleer Foundation, Metal Edge, and the 
Berger Collection Educational Trust. 

This work was made possible by our outstand¬ 
ing and knowledgeable partners. Our thanks to 
Heritage Preservation and its President, Larry 
Reger, and many staff members, including 
Moira Egan, Executive Vice President; Kristen 
Overbeck Laise, Vice President, Collections Care 
Programs; Elsa Huxley, Director of Meetings, 
Membership, and External Affairs; and Mary 
Rogers, Coordinator, Emergency and Collections 


Care Programs. We are especially 
grateful as well to the American 
Association for State and Local History 
k and Executive Director Terry Davis; Bob 
Beatty, Vice President of Programs, and 
\ Terry Jackson, Program Associate. We 
also appreciate the dedication of the 
American Institute for Conservation of 
Historic and Artistic Works, especially 
Eryl Wentworth, Executive Director, and 
Eric Pourchot, Director of Institutional 
Advancement. In addition, we want to 
recognize Selma Thomas, Founder and 
President, Watertowm Productions; Jill 
Collins, President, Jill Collins, Public 
Relations Group; Giuliana Bullard, 
President, Duetto Communications; 
Susannah Seidl-Fox, Program Director, 
Culture and the Arts, Salzburg Global 
Seminar; Elizabeth Perry and Elisa Glazer, 
The Washington Corporate and Cultural 
Affairs Group; and Matt Burdetsky, Capital 
Meeting Planning. 


Staffers at the Smithsonian Institution's 
National Air and Space Museum work to 
stabilize, exhibit, and store Apolio-era 
Astronaut Frank Borman's space suit. 


Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation 


41 






Photo Credits 



David Marquis of the Upper Midwest 
Conservation Association performs 
conservation work on Guercino's Erminia 
and the Shepherds for the Minneapolis 
Institute of Arts. 


Resources 

For more information on collections care, see the following resources on 
the IMLS Connecting to Collections Web site at www.imls.gov/collections: 


Connecting to Collections Video 

The Connecting to Collections initiative is a call 
to action, spurring activity at the local, state, 
and national level to care for America's col¬ 
lections. This video was developed to under¬ 
score the importance of collections held in 
museums, libraries, and archives throughout 
the U.S., and to inspire communities to take 
action. 

National Tour: Buffalo Webcast 

The fourth and final stop on the Connecting 
to Collections National Tour was in Buffalo 
for the "Stewardship of America's Legacy: 
Answering the Call to Action" forum. 

The full conference is available for online 
viewing. 

National Tour: San Diego Webcast 

The third stop on the Connecting to Collections 
National Tour was in San Diego for the 
"It's Alive! Petals to Primates: Preservation 
Challenges of Living Collections" forum. 

The full conference is available for online 
viewing. 


National Tour: Atlanta Webcast 

The first stop on the Connecting to Collections 
National Tour was in Atlanta for the 
"Preserving America's Diverse Heritage" 
forum. The full conference is available for 
online viewing. 

Summit Proceedings DVD 

Video highlights from the National 
Conservation Summit are available in a two- 
disc DVD package, along with the full text of 
the conference keynotes. E-mail imlsinfo@ 
imls.gov to request a copy. 

Guide to Online Resources 

The Guide to Online Resources is a com¬ 
panion to the IMLS Connecting to Collections 
Bookshelf, a core set of books, DVDs, online 
resources, and an annotated bibliography 
that was distributed free to nearly 3,000 col¬ 
lecting institutions. The Guide contains links 
to the most trusted collections care resources 
on the Web. Use it to find answers to com¬ 
mon conservation and collections manage¬ 
ment questions. 


National Tour: Denver Webcast 

The second stop on the Connecting to 
Collections National Tour was in Denver for 
the "Collaboration in the Digital Age" forum. 
The full conference is available for online 
viewing. 


Capitalize on Collections Care 

This booklet on strategies for increasing 
support for the preservation of collections 
contains tips, principles, and information 
on available resources and tools. It can be 
ordered from Heritage Preservation or down¬ 
loaded from the IMLS Web site. 


Front Cover 

"Spirit” post-conservation. 

Courtesy: Shelburne Museum. 

Register books. Courtesy: District of Columbia 
Government Office of Public Records. 

Image from “Varsha Ritu" or “Rainy 
Season.” Courtesy: Anupam Sah. 

Australian landscapes. Courtesy: University 
of California at Berkeley Botanical Garden. 

Contents 

Courtesy: Samuel P. Harn Museum 
in Gainesville, Florida. Photo: 

Randy Batista Photography. 

Page 1 

Sacred cloak. Courtesy: Bishop Museum. 

Page 3 

Shrimpo sheer clamp installation. 

Courtesy: Center for Wooden Boats. 

WWII-era posters. Courtesy: Delaware 
County Community College. 

Page 4 

The Akeley Hall of African 
Mammals. Courtesy: American 
Museum of Natural History. 

Pages 

Conservator Bob Barclay with feathered 
cloak mount. Courtesy: Bishop Museum. 

Cow Wallpaper by Andy Warhol. Courtesy: © 
2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the 
Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), 
New York. Photo: Tucson Museum of Art. 

Page 6 

Exterior restoration, and full photo, 
of Tchefuncte Lighthouse. Courtesy: 

Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime 
Museum. Photo: Jay C. Martin. 

Page 7 

Maris Pacifici map showing damage from 
flood waters. © University of Hawaii at 
Manoa Library. Maris Pacifici map after 
receiving conservation treatment for 
flood damage. Photo: Jeffrey Warda. © 
University of Hawaii at Manoa Library. 


42 


Chapter 6: The Impact and the Future 




Mold-damaged artwork by Moses 
Toliver. Courtesy: Ohr-O'Keefe 
Museum of Art. Photo: Betty Fiske. 

Books and government documents in ruins 
after a 2004 flood at the Hamilton Library. 
Courtesy: Susan Murata. © Susan Murata. 

Photograph of Chet Baker at Sioux Falls 
Community Playhouse, 1957. © The 
University of South Dakota. University 
Libraries. Archives and Special Collections. 

Textile Conservation Center/ 

American Textile History Museum. 

© Textile Conservation Center. 

Walter J. Brown Media Archives 
& Peabody Awards Collections. 

Photo by Jeffrey J. Martin. 

Page 8 

17th-century gilt wood bodhisattva statue. 
Samuel P. Flam Museum of Art, University 
of Florida, Gainesville. Photo: Randy 
Batista Photography. X-ray of bodhisat- 
tva’s head. Courtesy: Samuel P. Harn 
Museum of Art and Shands Hospital, 
University of Florida, Gainesville. 

Page 9 

Flooded aisle at a New Mexico Museum 
of Indian Arts and Culture storage facil¬ 
ity. Courtesy: Museum of Indian Arts 
and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology, 
Department of Cultural Affairs, www. 
miaclab.org. Photo: Anita McNeece. Acoma 
jar. Courtesy: Museum of Indian Arts 
and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology, 
Department of Cultural Affairs, www. 
miaclab.org. Photo: John Torres-Nez. 

Page 11 

(Top to bottom, left to right) Henry Smith. 
Courtesy: Committee on African American 
History Observances/Dreamkeepers 
Collection, Georgetown County Library, 
Georgetown, South Carolina. The Reverend 
Meredith B. Hudson (1864-1928) poses 
with his wife, Nancy Bennett Hudson for a 
studio portrait. Courtesy: Samuel Hudson 


Photograph Collection. Georgetown County 
Library, Georgetown, South Carolina. Jean 
and Ed Mason pose near the lookout 
in front of the Bland Cottage in 1935. 
Courtesy: Pawleys Island Civic Association 
Collection, Georgetown County Library, 
Georgetown, South Carolina. Girl in 
costume. Courtesy: Georgetown County 
Museum Collection, Georgetown County 
Library, Georgetown, South Carolina. House 
destroyed by Hurricane Hazel. Courtesy: 
Georgetown County Hurricane Collection, 
Georgetown County Ubrary, Georgetown, 
South Carolina. Houston Parson. Courtesy: 
Committee on African American History 
Observances/Dreamkeepers Collection, 
Georgetown County Library, Georgetown, 
South Carolina. A man with his large fish. 
Courtesy: Morgan-Trenholm Collection, 
Georgetown County Ubrary, Georgetown, 
South Carolina. Group of eight in bath¬ 
ing suits on Pawleys Island. Courtesy: 
Georgetown County Museum Collection, 
Georgetown County Ubrary, Georgetown, 
South Carolina. African-American man 
in ox cart. Courtesy: Georgetown County 
Museum Collection, Georgetown County 
Ubrary, Georgetown, South Carolina. Eloise 
Cooper standing in front of the Waccamaw 
Center for Mental Health. Courtesy: 
Committee on African American History 
Observances/Dreamkeepers Collection, 
Georgetown County Ubrary, Georgetown, 
South Carolina. Garden City Point after 
Hurricane Hugo. Courtesy: Georgetown 
County Hurricane Collection, Georgetown 
County Ubrary, Georgetown, South 
Carolina. House destroyed by Hurricane 
Hazel. Courtesy: Georgetown County 
Hurricane Collection, Georgetown County 
Ubrary, Georgetown, South Carolina. 

Page 13 

Moving grasses and Monkey Puzzle. 
Courtesy: University of California 
at Berkeley Botanical Garden. 


Hopi basket plaque. Courtesy: 

Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/ 
Laboratory of Anthropology, Department 
of Cultural Affairs, www.miaclab. 
org. Photo: John Torres-Nez. 

Watercolor of the Diana Pool at 
Brookgreen Gardens by Eliot O'Hara. 
Courtesy: Brookgreen Gardens 
Collection, Georgetown County Ubrary, 
Georgetown, South Carolina. 

Page 14 

Packets of Kool-Aid. Courtesy: 

Hastings Museum. 

Page 15 

“Trudy” in bloom. Courtesy: University of 
California at Berkeley Botanical Garden. 

Page 16 

Close-up of Monet’s Champ d’avoine (Field 
of Oats), pre-conservation. Samuel P. 

Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, 
Gainesville and Rustin Levenson Art 
Conservation Associates. Monet's Champ 
d'avoine (Field of Oats), after conservation. 
Courtesy: Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, 
University of Florida, Gainesville and Rustin 
Levenson Art Conservation Associates. 

Page 17 

Cover of On Guard! publication. Courtesy: 
Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University 
of Florida, Gainesville and Anika Khan, 
Harn Museum of Art Graphic Design 
Intern. Image: Bryan Yeager. Hands 
Off. page in On Guard! publication. 
Courtesy: Samuel P. Harn Museum of 
Art, University of Florida, Gainesville. 

Photo: Randy Batista Photography. 

Page 18 

Working group report. Photos: 

Anne Bauchinger, Kurt Kaindl, 
and Herman Seidl. 

Page 22 

(Clockwise) Schloss Leopoldskron, 
Salzburg, Austria. Plenary in Parker 
Hall; George Abungu; Plenary in 


Parker Hall; Tim Whalen, Hanna 
Pennock. Photos: Anne Bauchinger, 

Kurt Kaindl, and Herman Seidl. 

Lonnie Bunch, Director of the Smithsonian 
National Museum of African American 
History and Culture, giving the keynote 
address. Photos: Anne Bauchinger, 

Kurt Kaindl, and Herman Seidl. 

Page 23 

Emergency Preparedness Group. 

Photos: Anne Bauchinger, Kurt 
Kaindl, and Herman Seidl. 

(Clockwise, group of four photos) 

Loh Hen Noi; Margie Johnson Reese, 
Anupam Sah, Kay Raseroka; Larry Reger, 
Hany Hanna, Franz Grupp; Richard 
McCoy. Photos: Anne Bauchinger, 

Kurt Kaindl, and Herman Seidl. 

Asma Ibrahim. Photos: Anne Bauchinger, 
Kurt Kaindl, and Herman Seidl. 

Mural painters. Courtesy: Anupam Sah. 

Page 26 

1874 Webb-Jones farmhouse. Courtesy: 
Mandarin Museum and Historical Society. 

Page 27 

Photo with Bookshelf recipients. 

Courtesy: Kansas City Public Ubrary. 

Photo by John Gladman. 

Page 32 

Two Angels and Three Shepherds by 
Allan Crite. Courtesy: Conservation Center 
for Art and Historic Artifacts. © African 
American Museum of Philadelphia. 

Page 33 

Pennsylvania statewide planning 
grant poster. Courtesy: Conservation 
Center for Art and Historic Artifacts. 

Page 37 

"Spirit” post-conservation. Courtesy: 
Shelburne Museum. "Ranger” during 
restoration. Courtesy: Shelburne Museum. 


Page 38 

Head of the last buffalo shot by 
Buffalo Bill. Courtesy: Buffalo Bill 
Museum. Buffalo Bill's Stetson. 

Courtesy: Buffalo Bill Museum. 

Photograph of Buffalo Bill's grave, 

1920. Courtesy: Buffalo Bill Museum. 

Page 41 

Apollo-era space suit. Courtesy: National 
Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian 
Institution (SI 2002-6975).Photo: Mark 
Avino. Apollo-era Astronaut Borman’s 
space suit being conserved. Photo by Eric 
Long, National Air and Space Museum, 
Smithsonian Institution (SI 2001-11472-6). 

Page 42 

Conservation work on Guercino's 
Erminia and the Shepherds. Courtesy: 
Minneapolis Institute of Arts. 

Back Cover 

Acoma jar. Courtesy: Museum of 
Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory 
of Anthropology, Department of 
Cultural Affairs, www.miaclab. 
org. Photo: John Torres-Nez. 

Australasia ferns landscape. 

Courtesy: University of California 
at Berkeley Botanical Garden. 

Last Will and Testament of Blanche I. 
Bruce. Courtesy: District of Columbia 
Government Office of Public Records. 

17th-century gilt wood bodhisat¬ 
tva statue. Samuel P. Harn Museum of 
Art, University of Florida, Gainesville. 

Photo: Randy Batista Photography. 




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